Earth's 62-million-year Ctrl-Alt-Delete cycle

Interesting article about a cycle of mass extinction every 62 million years. Given that the last one was about 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs, it could be said to be currently relevant.

Are we seeing the start with things like extreme weather globally and even the Tsunami and other geologic activivity? Well maybe not, but little bits of info like this that keep cropping up suggest "something" is happening. Who knows, I'll be keeping an eye on it, but won't be barricading myself in a cave anytime just yet. Interestingly they mention Planet X in it also.

Mass extinction comes every 62 million years, UC physicists discover

"With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years"

"We've tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction," Muller said, "and so far, we've failed."

But the cycles are so clear that the evidence "simply jumps out of the data," said James Kirchner

Perhaps, they suggested, there's an unknown "Planet X" somewhere far out beyond the solar system that's disturbing the comets in the distant region called the Oort Cloud -- where they exist by the millions -- to the point that they shower the Earth and cause extinctions in regular cycles.

(edit to fix link)


[edit on 11-3-2005 by pantha]

Where are we in this 62 million cycle?

Roper

Originally posted by Roper
Where are we in this 62 million cycle?
Roper

We are actually 3 million years overdue.

This is a really intersting article, I was actually trying to find this article. So thank you.

I doubt the planet X, they mention is the same as the Planet Nibru, the one that was supposed to strike last month june and wipe out all traces of life on this planet.

For some reason the link doesn't work for me. Could you check it?

Surf

[edit on 3/11/2005 by surfup]

Found it originally through www.fark.com. The article itself is from the San Francisco Chronicle. I'll see if I can find another link.

I've fixed your link for you

Sweet, thanks for that. Just lousy syntax again?

This one is the SFC's science page where the article is listed as well. Looks like there are a few interesting ones there actually.

www.sfgate.com...

[edit on 11-3-2005 by whita]

Well, what's a million years here or there. + or - 10%

Roper

This shows that we are merely just renting space here on earth....

and we are a few million years overdue on our rent payment.. Mother Earth
has given us enough warnings.. It's eviction time!

I'm skeptical.

I looked over the series of dieoffs awhile back and didn't see that kind of pattern. I'm in too much of a hurry to look it up right now, though.

That is a fine article. I only have a few questions. First what species survived these wipe outs? And if a few humans did...how? Where were the hardest hit areas? And lastly does anyone have a clue as to the process? Fire, water, ect?
I mean if the volcanos erupted there would be fire and if a huge asteroid hit the ocean then created a tsunami that would in turn put out the fire.
This is a very interesting post Thanks in advance

We need to move to mars quick!!!

I tend to agree with Byrd.

Rohde has been on the edge of mainstream science for a long while, but his hypotheses haven't been accepted by most researchers.

For example, his comment about the the timing of the Cretaceous/Tertiary die-off tying in with the Deccan Traps and the Permian/Triassic die-off tying in with the Siberian traps are true; but they're not the same distance apart as other die-offs, and besides, if you look at Deccan Traps as a causative for the K-T die-off, how do you deal with the Iridium layer at the K-T boundary and the Chicxulub Strike?

And where does he mention the Archaeozoic die-off when just about every existing life form died off (leaving only a few anaerobic bacteria as their descendents and entire new kingdoms of biota appeared as the planet went from a reducing to an oxidizing atmosphere?

The point is that, despite the efforts to bend the data, there is no discernable cyclic die-off, whether tied to "nibble-you", Nemesis, the Earth passing theough the same area of the galaxy as it rotates, etc.

[edit on 13-3-2005 by Off_The_Street]

I dont know about a regular cycle of extinction, but from destruction and Chaos (from humanitys point of view) comes order, that is how Nature operates. Stars explode and create the matter for planets and life. Volcanoes errupt and create Hawaii. Meteors smash into planets and carry the acids for life. Its one big cycle of continous reconstruction.

krt1967 says:

"First what species survived these wipe outs? And if a few humans did...how?"

It depends on the particular one, The Cretaceous-Cenozoic (K-T) one, where the dinosaurs were killed off about 69 million years ago, killed most large land animals, and quite a few sea critters, too.

But there were no humans or even remote ancestors of humans at the latest die-out. Indeed, the only mammals that existed at the time -- as far as I know -- were small shrew-like critters.

It was almost definitely caused by an asterioid strike in what is not the Yucatan Peninsula, which may have set off a tremendous set of volcanic disturbances in what is now India.

The one before was worse; it killed off aobut 80 percent of all species -- land and water both. It may have been caused by a comet or asteroid strike too, but we don't know for sure. We do know there was a tremendouos series of eruptions in what is now Siberia.

The earliest one was when the Earth's atmosphere, then comprising methane and ammonia, brecame, through a series of reactions, inundated with a corrosive poison which destroyed 99 percent of the existing (mostly microscopic) life. that corrosive poison was oxygen, and a whole new set of life forms arose which actually used it and here we are.

But in the case of the asteroid strike and the volcanic activity, the probable killer was the incredible amounts of dust flung up into the stratosphere , blocking the sun's warmth and resulting in a winter that maight've laster for a thousand years. The cold and darkness would have stopped photosynthesis in plants which slowed oxygen production and also resulted in the starvation of the plant-eating critters, which resulted in the starvation of the carnivorous critters.

"Where were the hardest hit areas?"

The Chicxulub strike was in what is not Mexico, so that whole area was pretty messed up. But the long-term effects from the layer of stratospheric dust, were planet-wide.

"And lastly does anyone have a clue as to the process?"

Various; see above.

Toolmaker, you're absolutely right.