Understanding the worst mass extinction event in history could provide insight into what awaits us – and provide a warning if global action is not taken.
Therefore, an international team of researchers looked back 252 million years ago, during the end of the Permian period, when an event of severe extinction, invented as the “Great Dying”, wiped out 19 of 20 species from Earth, California Academy of Sciences reported.
For the first time, in a study published on Wednesday, researchers identified what made “The Great Dying” more severe than other periods of extinction. Scientists have studied this period because of the similarities in the crises that took place then and now – “namely the disappearance due to the massive release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” they wrote. , adding that this period is also facing global warming, acid rain and acidification.
But unlike other mass extinctions throughout history, species from the late Permian period have struggled to recover, possibly for 10 million years, the California Academy of Sciences reported. To find out why, scientists recreated food webs, taken from northern China, covering the Permian and Triassic periods, which showed how a single region responded to the collapse of the ecosystem.
“By studying the fossils and evidence in the teeth, stomach contents and feces, we were able to identify who ate who,” lead author and researcher at the Yuangeng Huang Academy Academy of Sciences in California. “It is important to build a precise food network if we are to understand these ancient ecosystems.”
Following food webs during this time, scientists saw that when the animals died, nothing replaced them, creating an “unbalanced ecosystem,” according to the California Academy of Sciences.
“We found that the final Permian event was exceptional in two ways,” said Professor Mike Benton of the University of Bristol at the California Academy of Sciences. “Firstly, the collapse of diversity was much more severe, while in the other two mass extinctions there were ecosystems with low stability before the final collapse. And secondly, it took a very long time for ecosystems to recover. “.
The new study comes at the same time as two other revolutionary studies that also make comparisons between “The Great Dying” and the present day. In one of these studies, scientists developed a record of ocean acidity, which allowed them to track how “The Great Dying” occurred, CBS reported.
The extinction did not happen all at once, but occurred as a series of events, from volcanic activity, carbon dioxide release, global warming, acidifying oceans, fire and erosion, which span a million years, Professor Uwe Brand , a geo-scientist at Brock University in Canada who was involved in the study of ocean recordings, told CBS News.
“These are not individual and separate causes, but they all acted together, they acted in concert, and that’s why I call it the perfect storm,” Brand told CBS News. “You were hit on this side with the temperature, on this side with the acidification, and then, finally, the knock-out blow came from the deoxygenation.”
While the possibility of avoiding the same ecological collapse may seem elusive, there are conversations about how to respond, even globally.
“Human well-being is about protecting the health of the planet,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently told UN News after a report was published. Making peace with nature, which calls for urgent action to combat environmental crises. “The rewards will be huge. With a new awareness, we can direct investment in policies and activities that protect and restore nature.”
Yuangeng Huang and his team’s research on food webs also shows what species have recovered from “The Great Dying,” providing information on how modern species can do the same.
“This is an amazing new result,” said Professor Zhong-Qiang Chen of the Chinese University of Geosciences, Wuhan told the California Academy of Sciences. “The combination of new extraordinary data from long sections of rock in northern China with state-of-the-art computing methods allows us to enter these ancient examples in the same way we can study food webs in the modern world.”