The most devastating extinction of life on Earth in the geological past was triggered some 252 million years ago by the release of immense amounts of carbon dioxide during violent volcanic events in what is now Siberia.
Record CO2 emissions that caused ocean acidification and global warming to lethal levels for most organisms.
This is the conclusion reached by the research published in the journal Nature Geoscience and coordinated by the Geomar Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel and by the Helmholtz Center Potsdam GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences.
Italia via participated with the Universities of Ferrara and Milan.
Based on the analysis of marine fossil shells from the Dolomites and southern China from which it was possible to reconstruct the pH of ancient oceans, the study provides evidence for environmental and climate changes that led to what is called the largest extinction of mass in the history of the Earth, which occurred before the appearance of the dinosaurs.
It was a very rapid extinction from the point of view of geological time, explain the researchers: within a few tens of thousands of years about 70% of terrestrial species and 95% of marine species disappeared.
The causes have long been debated in the scientific world regarding how and why the Earth became inhospitable to life so quickly.
A point is made by this study, which for the first time gives a unitary and convincing picture of the mechanisms that led to extinction and its consequences.