No Safe Ground For Life To Stand On During World's Largest Mass Extinction

[Celebration]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051202085309.htm

The world's largest mass extinction was probably caused by poisonous volcanic gas, according to research published today...........snip

Many scientists had previously thought that an asteroid hitting the earth or a deep-sea methane release had caused the extinction, which obliterated more than two-thirds of reptile and amphibian families.

However, analysis of a unique set of molecules found in rocks taken from the Dolomites in Italy has enabled scientists to build up a picture of what actually happened. The molecules are the remains of polysaccharides, large sugar-based structures common in plants and soil, and they tell the story of the extinction...............snip

The researchers believe that the volcanic gases from the eruption, which would have depleted earth's protective ozone layer and acidified the land and sea, killed rooted vegetation. This meant that soil was no longer retained and it washed into the surrounding oceans.

[Odin2005]

1. My reading says that...

...the Permian extenction was cause by a combination of things. During the late Permian, the ocrans were very stagnant, and the ocean floor became covered with organic muck (which became carbon-rich shales). At the very end of the period, there was a drastic drop in sea levels cause by a change in mid-ocrean ridge activity. Large areas of goo-covered seafloor was exposed to oxygen, sucking enough oxygen out of the air (down to 14% IIRC) that most animal life suffocated. The same goo oxidation caused a massive input of CO2 and methane into the air, and extensive vulcanism in Siberia made the global warming even worse. The oceans were so dead that algae was able to form stromatilites, which can only form when there are no animals to eat them. River sediments in South Africa show that even most soil invertabrates died, the last sediment layers of the period were perfectly laminated, there was no sediment mixing by worms. The extintion killed the mighty and the meek.