Posted on 09/03/2003 5:58:25 PM PDT by Mike Darancette
As It Happened: The Day the Earth Nearly Died 8pm, SBS (2.30am, Perth)
THINK of the wonderful profusion of life on Earth today. Then imagine 95 per cent of it dying in a terrible cataclysm. As this program from the BBC's Horizon series tells us, it's not a fantasy, it happened 250 million years ago, bringing the Permian period, with its myriad strange life-forms, crashing to an end and sending evolution into an abrupt reverse.
The Permian mass extinction dwarfed the demise of the dinosaurs, caused by an asteroid strike 65 million years ago, when 60 per cent of species were destroyed.
But 250 million years ago, something happened that wiped almost every trace of life from Earth. We know this, because suddenly in the rock strata from that time, the Permian fossils disappear leaving just a layer of blank rock -- the dead zone, as it's called tonight.
What this killer was and why it came, no one knew. There were apparently no clues in the Permian rocks, which are so old and eroded they're hard to study.
Then, in the early 1990s, one man stumbled on the significance of something in Siberia that started others thinking. Tonight's program traces the scientific detective work that has finally fingered the twin culprits that visited our planet with such destruction.
The process began when Frenchman Professor Vincent Courtillon realised the importance of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of lava buried under the frozen wastes of a part of Siberia known as the Traps. Some 250 million years ago, it split apart in a giant volcanic eruption that lasted millions of years.
Would the resulting climate change have wiped out almost all life? Courtillon said yes. But others said no.
What about a meteor strike, as had killed the dinosaurs? This idea was considered, then discounted.
Then, in the late '90s British geologist Paul Wignall travelled to Greenland -- which has the best preserved Permian rocks -- to look for new clues.
It's fascinating how he and others were able finally to piece together the story of the Permian mass extinction from one basic clue -- a puzzlingly high level of carbon-12 in Greenland's Permian rocks.
The story goes like this: The Siberian eruption warmed the Earth by some five degrees, over time killing many species. But it also caused a gentle rise in sea temperature, eventually releasing frozen methane from the watery depths into the atmosphere. This, in turn, caused an additional five degrees of global warming -- enough to take life on Earth to the brink.
Copyright 2003, Australian
"Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it smash our enemies to tiny bits." And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and lima bean-
New Crater Found Down Under [got it to load today]
Source: space.com
Published: 21 April 2000 Author: Stewart Taggart
Posted on 04/21/2000 09:25:45 PDT by RightWhale
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a390081092974.htm
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Note: this topic is from September 2003. |
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Why? Who (besides Glob Al Gore) is worried about getting out of this world alive? By the time all this gloom and doom happens, Man will be in a Better Place.
The fallacy in you post is there is no evidence of a flood in the noted cataclysm. Genesis is just not applicable
A meteor strike did not cause the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The mass die-off occurred over several million years.
It was also utterly predictable that ‘global warming’ in some form would be ultimate suspect for the Permian extinction. Of course, large volcanic eruptions release massive amounts of particulates which causes massive cloud formation which leads to periods of extreme cooling.
Just more speculative nonsense by the usual toadies paid for by the taxpayers promoting the usual Stalinist agenda.
Seems like this would cause a major disruption of life on Earth but, this happened millions of years AFTER the Great Dying.
So, the theory is the Permian dying was caused by the oceans squeezing out the biggest fart ever seen on earth??
They Permian species didn’t die out, they just couldn’t take the smell of it and moved away.
LOL! Have you drunk the tap water in any of those Permian Basin cities? I checked into a hotel in Midland and wondered why every door had a room service tray with Perrier empties next to it. I found out! Yuk!
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