Josh Fischman reports that geoscientists have tied a period of fierce, extensive volcanic activity to a terrible extinction that nearly wiped all life off our planet. Around 252 million years ago, more than 96% of marine species and 70% of land species disappeared in a geological instant. This mass die-off has become known as the end-Permian mass extinction. What was its cause? Geoscientists now think that massive volcanic activity, in a Large Igneous Province called the Siberian Traps, raised air and sea temperatures and released toxic amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over a very short period of time.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers Samuel Bowring and Seth Burgess explain in this video how they figured out that the Siberian Traps erupted at the right time, and for the right duration, to have been a likely trigger for this great dying. No mention has been made by Fischman about reports of the identification of a very large impact crater below the ice in Antarctica. The event forming the crater has been dated to about late-Permian. The impact could have caused an energy pulse to pass through the interior of the Earth erupting in Siberia.
Original working URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/giant-eruptions-and-giant-extinctions-video/?WT.mc_id=SA_EVO_20160314
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