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Ancient mass extinction driven by China volcanoes, study finds
- Evidence suggests the ‘Great Dying’ of 250 million years ago began with a ‘volcanic winter’ followed by a longer period of global warming
- Research team says findings serve as reminder of the possible effects of today’s climate change
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A mass extinction some 250 million years ago – known as the Great Dying – was driven by a “volcanic winter” which originated in southern China and not, as previously believed, in Siberia, according to a new study.
Researchers believe the end-Permian mass extinction began with several degrees of rapid cooling, followed by a longer period of global warming which, until now, has been widely seen as the driving force behind the near-collapse of life on Earth.
The scientists, led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Nanjing University, said their findings served as a reminder of the possible effects of climate change today.
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“[We] argue that this volcanism [in South China] would have produced several degrees of rapid cooling before or coincident with the more protracted global warming,” they wrote in a research article published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances last week.
The prevailing view has been that eruptions in a large region of volcanic rock known as the Siberian Traps in today’s Russia were solely responsible for the mass extinction.
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In this scenario, the release of a massive amount of greenhouse and poisonous gases, like carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, from the large igneous region was enough to cause severe global warming.
But the new study argues that temporal links between the mass extinction and volcanic eruptions were largely based on sedimentary records from southern China and the researchers said the Siberian region contained no direct evidence of the event.
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