Chemistry and Mass Extinction

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-paleoecologists-mass-extinction-due-huge.html

This article is about an alternate theory to a mass extinction where about 50% of all life forms on earth were wiped out 201.4 million years ago. This data was collected by testing isotopes in plants from several million years ago. The original theory was that volcanic eruptions directly caused this extinction. What they now hypothesize is that when the volcano's erupted, they melted ice at the bottom of the ocean which released approximately 12,000 gigatons of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a (mildly) toxic chemical which, if breathed in in large doses, kills. The carbon dioxide that we are now releasing into the atmosphere as humans, replicates the volcanoes and warms the planet. What is saving us from the same fate as the species all those years ago, is the fact that there is far less frozen methane frozen in ice at the bottom of the ocean. We will hopefully not replicate the End-Triassic Mass Extinction.

Posted by Max Collins