A huge volcanic
eruption in China some 260 million years ago led to the
sudden extermination of marine life clear around the
world, British paleontologists announced, in a report being
published this week in the journal Science.
The researchers were able to pinpoint the exact timing of the
massive eruption thanks to a layer of fossilized rock which showed
mass
extinction of different life forms -- clearly linking the
volcanic blasts to a major environmental catastrophe.
"The abrupt extinction of marine life we can clearly see in the
fossil record firmly links giant volcanic eruptions
with global environmental catastrophe," said Paul Wignall, a
professor and palaeontologist at the University of
Leeds, who was the lead author of the research paper in the
May 29 edition of Science.
The eruption in southwest China unleashed about a
half million cubic kilometers of lava, covering an area five times
the size of Wales, according to the research by scientists at the
British university.
The mass extinction of ocean life came about because of the
collision of fast flowing lava with shallow sea water, which caused
a violent explosion at the start of the eruptions and threw huge
quantities of sulphur dioxide into the
stratosphere.
"When fast flowing, low viscosity magma meets shallow sea ...
there's spectacular explosion producing gigantic clouds of steam,"
Wignall said.
there's this term in anthropology called "population
bottleneck", which is when the majority of a species or group dies
off, the remaining small population which survived through the
ordeal, will reproduce again
