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TOPIC: The 'Great Dying'
Blobrana


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Luoping site
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"The Luoping site dates from the Middle Triassic and contains one of the most diverse marine fossil records in the world. It has yielded 20,000 fossils of fishes, reptiles, shellfish, shrimps and other seabed creatures. We can tell that we're looking at a fully recovered ecosystem because of the diversity of predators, most notably fish and reptiles. It's a much greater diversity than what we see in the Early Triassic - and it's close to pre-extinction levels" - Professor Benton.

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Blobrana


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RE: The 'Great Dying'
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Erupting volcanoes, burning coal probably caused Earth's first major extinction

University researchers are suggesting that massive volcanic eruptions led to Earth's first environmental disaster - 190 million years before the demise of the dinosaur.
Up to 95 per cent of all marine species and 70 per cent of land vertebrates became extinct during this Permian-Triassic period. The Great Dying also caused the only known mass extinction of insects.
A University of Calgary team that worked in Canada's High Arctic believes it found evidence that volcanoes in Siberia burned through coal, which in turn produced ash clouds that damaged global oceans.
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Blobrana


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Permian-Triassic extinction event
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Coal-fired trigger of mass extinction

From meteor impacts to methane-ice release, the culprits behind the Permian-Triassic extinction event - which devastated life on Earth 250 million years ago - have yet to be pinned down. Now a new suspect joins the line-up: fly ash from burning coal.
A study published today in Nature Geoscience1 suggests that one trigger for the near-apocalyptic 'great die-off', which killed 96% of marine species and 70% of land-based vertebrate organisms, was a volcanic explosion in coal and shale deposits in Siberia. Within days, ash from the eruption, raining down onto the Canadian Arctic, sucked oxygen from the water and released toxic elements.
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Blobrana


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Luoping fossils
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Fossil hunters have uncovered the remains of an ancient marine ecosystem that arose in the aftermath of the most devastating mass extinction in Earth's history.
The spectacular haul of 20,000 fossils from a hillside in southwestern China represents the first discovery of a complete ecosystem which bounced back after life was nearly wiped off the face of the planet 252m years ago.
The beautifully preserved remains include molluscs, sea urchins and arthropods, alongside much larger animals that occupied the top of the food chain, such as carnivorous fish and the first icthyosaurs, predatory marine reptiles that grew to four metres long.
Among the remnants are rare fragments of land life that survived the same period, including part of a conifer plant and the tooth of an archosaur reptile.
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Blobrana


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Posts: 131433
Date:
Luoping site
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New fossil site in China shows long recovery of life from the largest extinction in Earth's history

A major new fossil site in south-west China has filled in a sizeable gap in our understanding of how life on this planet recovered from the greatest mass extinction of all time, according to a paper co-authored by Professor Mike Benton, in the School of Earth Sciences, and published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The work is led by scientists from the Chengdu Geological Centre in China.
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Blobrana


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Permian-Triassic extinction event
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The Day the Algae Died

The mass extinction at the end of the Permian period almost cleared the planet of life 250 million years ago. Only one in ten species in the ocean survived. Two-thirds of reptiles and amphibians disappeared. Even plants and insects suffered major losses. But in this near-perfect strike, the first "pin" to topple may have been algae, according to researchers studying molecular fossils from this time.
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Blobrana


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RE: The 'Great Dying'
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University of Cincinnati geologists have found what led to 'The Great Dying the sudden death of around 90 percent of all living species 250 million years ago at the end of the Permian period. Thomas J. Algeo and his colleagues have looked at evidence that points to massive volcanism in Siberia.
A large portion of western Siberia reveals volcanic deposits five kilometres thick.
And, the lava flowed where it could most endanger life, through a large coal deposit. The effects of the Siberian lava eruption were amplified by the coal deposit.
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Blobrana


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Middle Permian (Capitanian) mass extinction
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Major mass extinction older than thought

A mass extinction event on a par with the extinction of the dinosaurs was almost certainly caused by explosive volcanism, and happened up to a million years earlier than previously thought, say scientists.
Massive volcanic eruptions 260 million years ago, in what is now the Emeishan region of southwest China, led to the disappearance of around 50 to 60 per cent of living species in a short space of time. Most of the casualties were tiny photosynthetic marine creatures, but plants on land may also have been affected.
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Blobrana


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Permian-Triassic extinction
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Mass extinctions : "giant" fossils are revolutionising current thinking

Large-sized gastropods (up to 7 cm) dating from only 1 million years after the greatest mass extinction of all time, the Permian-Triassic extinction, have been discovered by an international team including a French researcher from the Laboratoire Biogéosciences (CNRS/Université de Bourgogne), working with German, American and Swiss colleagues. These specimens call into question the existence of a "Lilliput effect", the reduction in the size of organisms inhabiting postcrisis biota, normally spanning several million years. The team's results, published in the February 2010 issue of the journal Geology, have drastically changed palaeontologists' current thinking regarding evolutionary dynamics and the way the biosphere functions in the aftermath of a mass extinction event.
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Blobrana


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RE: The 'Great Dying'
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Tiny organisms that covered the planet more than 250 million years ago appear to be a species of ancient fungus that thrived in dead wood, according to new research published today in the journal Geology.
The researchers behind the study, from Imperial College London and other universities in the UK, USA and The Netherlands, believe that the organisms were able to thrive during this period because the worlds forests had been wiped out. This would explain how the organisms, which are known as Reduviasporonites, were able to proliferate across the planet.
Researchers had previously been unsure as to whether Reduviasporonites were a type of fungus or algae. By analysing the carbon and nitrogen content of the fossilised remains of the microscopic organisms, the scientists identified them as a type of wood-rotting fungus that would have lived inside dead trees.

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