Read DTE’s special series on the Sixth Mass Extinction “The traits capture information on whether a species can tolerate warm waters or low oxygen levels,” Deutsch said. The supercomputer analyses species’ traits to map out how species were distributed - from surface to deep sea, from the equatorial waters to the poles. Next, the team did another simulation called the Ecophysiological model. Thus, scientists refer to this period as the ‘Great Dying’. Roughly 96 per cent of marine species and 70 per cent of land species went extinct. The change in climate after the volcanic eruptions was a death knell for the flourishing and diverse life forms. What Penn and Deutsch found in the simulated scenario was astonishing. Then, as now, the uncontrolled GHG emissions triggered climatic changes. Towards the end of the era, a series of volcanic eruptions occurred in central Siberia, injecting massive amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere. However, the large Panthalassic Ocean, which covered much of Earth, was home to many sponge and coral species, ammonites (tiny shelled organisms), brachiopods (invertebrate animals closely related to starfish) and fusulinid foraminifera (single-celled organisms closely associated with modern amoebas). The supercontinent was arid only a few parts received rainfall round the year. Oxygen levels were 80 per cent lower.ĭuring this period, land masses collided to form the supercontinent Pangaea. Global ocean temperatures were 10 degrees higher than today. The Permian era, a period spanning 298.9 million-252.2 million years ago, was a time before the dinosaurs ruled the planet. For, it held clues to how the current climate crisis would impact the oceans. Penn and Deutsch were curious to know what triggered this climate change. The planet’s biggest mass extinction of species had wiped out most newly evolved lives in the oceans. Justin Penn and Curtis Deutsch, scientists from Stanford University, had simulated during 2016-2018 how Earth’s climate changed some 250 million years ago to know what triggered the Permian extinction.
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