A Study Reveals That The Earliest Known Major Extinction Event On Earth Occurred 550 Million Years Ago
According to the details of a recent study released by ScienceAlert, geobiologists from the United States have shed new light on the first known mass extinction event on Earth, which happened 550 million years ago during a period known as the Ediacaran. Scott Evans, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geosciences, led the study, which was carried out by the Virginia Tech College of Science. About 80% of animals experienced the earliest mass extinctions during this time period, according to the study.
Evans claims that while many diverse species of creatures perished as a result of this, those whose body designs and behaviors suggest they relied heavily on oxygen appear to have been hit most severely. This suggests that, like all other mass extinctions in the geologic record, the extinction event was controlled by the environment.
Virginia Tech reports that on November 7, Mr. Evans’ work was published in the National Academy of Sciences peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Shuhai Xiao, a professor in the Department of Geosciences, as well as a group of scientists under the direction of Mary Droser from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, where Mr. Evans received his master’s and doctorate, contributed to the study.
Massive animal extinctions as well as significant ecosystem upheaval and reorganization can result from environmental changes like global warming and deoxygenation events. This has been proven time and time again via the study of Earth’s history, such as in the current research of the first extinction event recorded in the fossil record. Our understanding of the long-term effects of current environmental changes on the biosphere is thus improved by this study.
The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction, occurred 440 million years ago, the late Devonian Extinction, occurred 370 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic Extinction, occurred 250 million years ago, the Triassic-Jurassic Extinction, occurred 200 million years ago, and the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction, which occurred 65 million years ago, are the five mass
Mr. Evans and his colleagues gathered information on rare Ediacaran-era fossils of the squishier types of animals from all around the world. They discovered that previously observed abrupt changes in biodiversity weren’t the product of simple sampling biases.
Their research demonstrates that, like all previous mass extinctions on Earth, this new, initial extinction of animal species was brought about by significant climate change. This is just the latest in a long line of cautionary tales highlighting the risks of our current climate crisis for animal life.
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