Permian Mass Extinction May Have Happened 10X Faster Than Previously Thought

Something wiped out nearly all life on Earth more than 250 million years ago, and whatever unleashed this mass die-off acted much faster than previously thought, say scientists.

Based on an analysis of rocks in China, the end-Permian extinction occurred over the course of 60,000 years, give or take 48,000, researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That is about 10 times faster than scientists believed up until now and a blink of an eye in geological terms.

The extinction killed off 96 per cent of life on Earth.

Source 1, Source 2

just 60k years, i think we are going to kill more species in much less time, we are breaking records, go humanity!!! volcanoes got nothing against us.

In addition to establishing the extinction's duration, the researchers also found that, 10,000 years before the die-off, the oceans experienced a pulse of light carbon, which likely reflects a massive addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This dramatic change may have led to widespread ocean acidification and increased sea temperatures by 10 degrees Celsius or more, killing the majority of sea life.

Hey see global warming is nothing new, we got nothing to worry about as it happens all the time in our planet.

Multiple theories about its origin exist, top among them that a string of massive volcanic eruptions spewed huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, acidifying the oceans and causing intense global warming.

If it takes 60k years to have a massive extinction from super volcanoes does that means we have nothing to worry about the doom porn of Yellowstone?

reply to post by Indigent


Extinction Events are pretty awesome.
So far, we've had 5 major extinctions.

The P-Tr, or Permian - Triassic Extinction was awesome indeed with about 96% of all life on the planet eliminated.

Evidence paints a picture of a manifold event starting with the Siberian Traps which were a Flood Basalt event.
Flood Basalt?
Well, think of a volcano.
Now, think of a supervolcano.
Now, think of an ENTIRE CONTINENT turned into lava.
Yeah, so, Siberian Traps.
Basically all of what is Siberia was molten lava.
Think about what that would do to the atmosphere and how that would affect life.

That, however, was only part of the cause, though, Siberia was a bubbling pool of lava fountains from horizon to horizon for thousands of years (yeah, not just one little volcanic eruption, but, an ongoing continuous thing lasting longer than many civilizations have ever lasted).

Cars, and human caused pollution have NOTHING on a continental Flood Basalt.
Nope.

We then have the whole acidification of the Ocean kicking off due all the fun chemicals the Flood Basalt is spewing into the atmosphere, actually changing composition of the atmosphere substantially enough that some life probably quite literally suffocated to death.

Fun times.

Anyway, yeah, 5 major Extinction events.
Humanity has nothing on Nature.
Nature is the biggest serial killer of all time.
99.9% of all life that's ever lived is extinct; all killed by Mother Nature.

Nature wants to kills and she'll kill us all without any reason at all.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


Yes she is a loving mother as no other

thank you for the very informative contribution to the thread

reply to post by Indigent


I like to think of it as mom telling us to "move out", and get our own apartment or something.

Hopefully, soon, in the next 200 years, or sooner, we'll have independent, self sustaining, self maintaining, sustainable and stable colony populations on other planets, asteroids, or well on their way to another star.
Earth can't kill us if we're not on it.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite

Cars, and human caused pollution have NOTHING on a continental Flood Basalt.

Oh by the way what i had in mind when i put humans making mass extinctions it was not this but the chemicals killing insects, the mass deforestation killing habitats and disappearing tree species, the introduction of foreign species due to human intervention and the mass extinction of amphibious happening now

Just to add one more source for this news.

Reminded me of video I recently watched on youtube:




Also, it was interesting to see Animal Armageddon series:

1. Death Ray

2. Hell On Earth

3. Doomsday

4. Panic In The Sky

5. The Great Dying

6. Strangled

7. Fire and Ice

8. Next Extinction

It covers what AliceBleachWhite wrote in her reply, including interesting facts that at some points we, humans were on brick of extinction in not so far past. Great to watch, if you interested in archeology or history.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite

Hopefully, soon, in the next 200 years, or sooner, we'll have independent, self sustaining, self maintaining, sustainable and stable colony populations on other planets, asteroids, or well on their way to another star.

Hey if we are going for independence and sustainability how about we ditch all those and go for floating cities in the vacuum of space! ^_^

I've always found the flood basalt stuff really fascinating. I'm not religious at all but I can't help but parallel it to a lake of fire. It's quite hellish

IMO, human destruction and pollution could be longer lasting given the half-life of spent nuclear fuel or nuke weapon fallout. The chemical, biological, and physical damage caused by humans will take much less time for nature to heal compared to most naturally occurring extinction level events.

Eventually mankind will have to leave the planet and will invariably bring other organisms along for the ride. In a short amount of time, this would be a huge leap in evolution for humans and other species they bring with them. In the long term, any surviving life on earth would eventually fill the void left by the massive extinctions. By that time humans would be at home living off world.

If we could live well in space and travel at close to light speed, then the relative time on earth would go faster, taking less time to naturally heal and balance out (from our space-human perspective). Anyone left on earth could help nature and speed up the process as well. It seems that for humans to ultimately avoid extinction, evolve and allow the earth to heal from an ELE, that space is the next manifest destiny.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite

Hopefully, soon, in the next 200 years, or sooner, we'll have independent, self sustaining, self maintaining, sustainable and stable colony populations on other planets, asteroids, or well on their way to another star. Earth can't kill us if we're not on it.

Lord I hope not. We don't belong going anywhere to destroy like we have here. If you can't take care and clean up your own house,why would a neighbor want you moving into theirs and messing it up? We need to stay right here on this rock and either die by our own hands or learn to love this planet and make it better. Not scattering our seeds out in the Universe to mess up other worlds.

Dimithae
reply to post by AliceBleachWhite

 

Hopefully, soon, in the next 200 years, or sooner, we'll have independent, self sustaining, self maintaining, sustainable and stable colony populations on other planets, asteroids, or well on their way to another star. Earth can't kill us if we're not on it.

Lord I hope not. We don't belong going anywhere to destroy like we have here. If you can't take care and clean up your own house,why would a neighbor want you moving into theirs and messing it up? We need to stay right here on this rock and either die by our own hands or learn to love this planet and make it better. Not scattering our seeds out in the Universe to mess up other worlds.

And what do you propose we do if it's a ELE that is NOT by human hands?

Hmmmmmm?

eriktheawful
And what do you propose we do if it's a ELE that is NOT by human hands?

Hmmmmmm?

Very good point, and in following video (not sure why, but apparently I watched lots of videos with this theme ) you can see one of those scenarios, what if we have to evacuate earth?! Who will go, where, how... who will oppose anyone go and accept faith as act of God? For those that are going, what do you need to survive and start life somewhere else?

Very interesting video and many good points:

What a coincidence, last night on the way home I was listening NPR (click to link to page with transcript and option to listen) and there was interview with Elizabeth Kolbert regarding her last book - The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. She is talking about us, humans, speeding next extinction event with our mark on earth. (some species are already extinct thanks to our handy work)

And last night, she was guest at Jon Stewart as well.

www.thedailyshow.com...

I am glad at least someone is rising alarms on what we can see as sure road to next big event...

reply to post by SuperFrog


We may not be as cool as an entire continent turn into mordor but there should be no deny that we are eliminating many species due to our bad habits, the death of amphibians in central/south america is due to a not native fungus introduced by us by mistake. the lion fish we introduced by mistake in the caribean will kill many species too, countless cases like this have happened due to human intervention.

We do most by mistake the things we truly want to eradicate as virus and bacterias we cant do anything, just smallpox and perhaps a parasitic worm is all we could eradicate intentionally.

reply to post by SuperFrog


Gotta say thanks Frog!

You've given me a day of education and entertainment.

reply to post by eriktheawful


How about everything has its life cycle,and when its time to die,its time to die. That includes the human race.I know we like to think highly of ourselves.But the fact is that mother nature isn't picky about throwing out the old and bringing in the new. The Dinosaurs had the most successful run of anything on this planet and their time came up. It should be no different with us. I look around me and see the things that humans do to each other and other life forms,and I can't help but say, yeah we need to go when its our time.