The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct
Written by
BRIAN MERCHANT
SENIOR EDITOR
April 9, 2015 // 01:00 PM EST
motherboard.vice.com
The biggest extinction event in planetary history was driven by the rapid acidification of our oceans, a new study concl?udes. So much carbon was released into the atmosphere, and the oceans absorbed so much of it so quickly, that marine life simply died off, from the bottom of the food chain up.
That doesn’t bode well for the present, given the disturbingly similar rate that our seas are acidifying right now. Parts of the Pacific, for instance, are already so acidic that sea snails’ shells begin dissolving as soon as they’re born.
The biggest die-off in history, the Permian Extinction event, aka the Great Dying, extinguished over 90 percent of the planet's species—and 96 percent of marine species. A lot of theories have been put forward about why and how, exactly, the vast majority of Earth life went belly up 252 million years ago, but the new study, published in Science, offers some compelling evidence acidification was a key driver.... |
