Study: Tag-Team between Oceans and Continents Triggered Mesozoic Extinctions of Marine Life
Top Stories Tamfitronics In a paper published in the journal Nature Geosciencescientists offer a new explanation for a string of severe environmental crises, called oceanic anoxic events, which happened between 185 and 85 million years ago (Mesozoic era); these occurred when the seas became critically depleted of dissolved oxygen.Oceanic anoxic events are geologically abrupt phases of extreme oxygen depletion in the oceans that disrupted marine ecosystems and brought about evolutionary turnover. Typically lasting approximately 1.5 million years, these events occurred frequently during the Mesozoic era, from about 183 to 85 million years ago. One hypothesis suggests that anoxic events resulted from enhanced chemical weathering of Earth’s surface in a greenhouse world shaped by high volcanic carbon outgassing. Gernon et al. tested this hypothesis using a combination of plate reconstructions, tectonic-geochemical analysis and global biogeochemical modeling....
