Chinese and British scientists have identified a new mass extinction event

BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua
) -- Chinese and British scientists said in a paper published today in the U.S. journal Science Advances that after checking all relevant geological and paleontological evidence, they determined that the Carney flood event 233 million years ago was a mass extinction event that, in addition to leading to the extinction of some species, sent dinosaurs to the throne of the Earth.
latest study was carried out by 17 scientists, including Jacob Dal Corso of the National Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology from the University of Geoscientity (Wuhan), Professor Song Andy Song and Professor Mike Benton of the University of Bristol.
that the main cause of the mass extinction was most likely a massive volcanic eruption in Langlia, western Canada. "Volcanic eruptions peaked during the Carney period, emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, leading to rapid global temperature increases," Song explained to Science and Technology Daily.
, warming is driving more rainfall. As early as the 1980s, geologists Mike Simms and Alastair Ruffel discovered that the Earth's wet period lasted about a million years. Climate change has dealt a heavy blow to the diversity of marine and terrestrial life, but shortly after the extinction, new species swarmed the planet to form more modern ecosystems.
climate change has led to the great development of plants, modern conifer forests have also begun to expand. "The new plant community may have provided rations for herbivore reptiles that survived the mass extinction," Benton told Physicists. We now know that dinosaurs originated about 20 million years before the Carney floods, but before that, they were sparsely populated and had little place on Earth, and the sudden drought conditions that followed the event provided an opportunity for dinosaurs to dominate the planet."
song said climate change not only allowed dinosaurs to dominate the planet, but also prompted many modern plants and animals to take to the stage of Earth's history, including the first turtles, crocodiles, lizards and mammals. Moreover, marine life was affected by the Carney flood event, which began to see the emergence of modern types of coral reefs and plankton.
In the long history of life on Earth over the past 500 million years, paleontologists have identified five 'biological extermination' events, each of which has had a profound impact on the evolution of the Earth and life," Hekoso stressed. Now that we have identified a new mass extinction event, it is clear that it has played an important role in the reshuffle of land and marine life and marks the beginning of modern ecosystems. ”