About 66 million years ago, a large meteorite hit the Earth, and many of you know that the dinosaurs disappeared. Due to this event, besides the dinosaurs, many other living races were destroyed.
But the extinction process that these dinosaurs went through was not the worst extinction event in the history of the world.
Before the extinction of the dinosaurs, the mass extinction of living things that happened about 251.9 million years ago is said to be the worst mass extinction event in the history of the world.
This mass extinction is called the end-Permian mass extinction or the Great Dying. This is one of the worst extinction events in history, with 90 percent of the world’s aquatic species and 75 percent of terrestrial species disappearing.
This phenomenon is believed to have been caused by volcanic eruptions in the Siberian region (now Russia’s Siberian region) at that time. But so far, no evidence has been found to prove this hypothesis.
In addition, scientists could not think about how such a large number of animals were destroyed by this volcanic eruption.
At the end of last year, in the research journal Nature Communications, they presented research about the disappearance of this species.
According to this research, nickel particles released during the explosion of many volcanoes in the Siberian region fell into the air and water in large quantities, causing great environmental damage.
They came to this conclusion after studying sedimentary rocks that were deposited in the late Permian period in Buchanan Lake in the northern Arctic region of Canada. Many of the lightest isotopes of nickel have been found in these sedimentary rocks.
Isotopes are elements that are the same element but have different weights. (The nickel we see now is made up of the lightest nickel atoms.)
Experts believe that these nickels come from the re-deposition of nickel particles drifting into the atmosphere. This type of nickel isotope is mainly found in volcanic ash.
Many of the nickel isotopes commonly found in this volcanic ash were found around the time of the eruption of the Siberian volcano, so the scientists concluded that these nickels came out in large quantities from the eruption of the Siberian volcanoes.
Another fact that supports this point is the fact that there is a large amount of nickel sulfide underground in Siberia. This region is not far from the region where the volcanoes erupted in the late Permian period.
When a large amount of these nickels gets into the water, it causes great damage to the environment.
Nickel is an essential mineral for life. But normally, organisms only need a few nickels.
If there is too much nickel in the water, bacteria that produce methane gas, called methanogens, will multiply. These bacteria produce large amounts of methane gas.
When there is more methane in the water, oxygen dries up. At this time, many aquatic animals that depend on the oxygen in the water will die.
When there is a lot of methane gas in the atmosphere, oxygen is cut off and animals die.
There are other theories besides the current theory about this “great death”.
One of these theories is that the eruption caused global warming. In addition to nickel, other toxic minerals are believed to have entered the atmosphere in large quantities due to the volcanic eruption.
The acidification of the ocean water due to the gases released by the volcanic eruption may be one of the reasons for the death of marine life.
The drying up of oxygen in the water kills aquatic life.
Evidence was found that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was excessive due to the eruption of the volcano.
aquatic animals, plants, When land animals die, other animals that depend on them for food and water become scarce and die.
Some scholars believe that this large-scale species extinction occurred as a result of the evolutionary process presented above and was destroyed through volcanic eruptions.
