The Permian Extinction

[Charles Pegge]

Before the dinosaurs. About 250 million years ago.

The Permian Extinction-The Mother of Mass Extinctions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6I_0khJqxU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDbz2dpebhQ&NR=1



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxvsF0vPE5E&feature=related

The Permian Survivors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyIoUaUAfJo&feature=related

[kryton9]

80,000 years considered a quick extinction... now I don't feel that old. So was it methane from the oceans or toxic gas from dead oceans? Two theories, but I guess some sort of gas from the ocean was the final killer. Very interesting, thanks.

[Charles Pegge]

Massive volcanic activity in the Siberian planes caused global warming. This led to the heating of the poles, causing disruption of the ocean currents. The oceans became stagnant leading to death of marine life from oxygen starvation and proliferation of anaerobic bacteria. These produced large quantities of methane causing additional global warming which led to mass extinctions on land. It took 50 million years after this event to re-establish the biodiversity that was present before this disaster.

This is very different to what happened to the dinosaurs - a single meteor strike causing disruption of the atmosphere for a few years at most. The food chain collapsed and only small scavenging animal species were able to survive, and of course the seeds of plants. The little mammals rapidly evolved into large creatures filling the ecological niches left by the dinosaurs. And the small feathered survivors of the dinosaurs became birds.

[ErosOlmi]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7050312.ece

[Petr Schreiber]

Thanks for the video and reading.

The creatures, like Dimetrodon, with their heat receivers on backs, had to suffer quite a lot by raised temperature.

Such a tiny detail, 10°C in 80 000 years, and what a mess it managed to cause :?


Petr