The author was very good about sticking to the facts; and giving quite a lot of them. This article was fantastic to write a lot about because of all the information found within it.
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/images/KTextinction_big.jpg
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Microbes Caused Mass Extinction?
252 million years ago the world suddenly became desolate of lifeforms that had been there thousands of years ago. Wiped out after all this time and we have only thought that methane from large volcanoes was to blame, however, new research shows that maybe it wasn't just the gas but also a microbe that helped the gas become so prevalent in the air that it caused mass extinction. All those years ago about 90% of the earth's population was wiped clean due to toxic amounts of methane in the air. Scientists always thought the cause for such a catastrophic event was volcanoes emitting the gas. However, these new studies show that a bacteria named Methanosarcina is partially to blame. This bacteria munches away at carbon and in turn produces large amounts of methane. Which can be converted into CO2 by other microbes, this is the cause of the lack of oxygen in the air what caused these species of creatures to just start dropping like prehistoric flies. This microbe obtained the ability to convert CO2 into methane at around 250 million years ago, about the time the species were dropping dead. It's amazing how microbes can react and change the world around us by acquiring one simple new trait, it's scary at the same time.
The author was very good about sticking to the facts; and giving quite a lot of them. This article was fantastic to write a lot about because of all the information found within it.
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/images/KTextinction_big.jpg
The author was very good about sticking to the facts; and giving quite a lot of them. This article was fantastic to write a lot about because of all the information found within it.
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/images/KTextinction_big.jpg
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This is really interesting. I'm definitely not surprised that this bacterium had such an impact on the mass extinction. The fact that this microbe adapted and developed a new trait that brought this up this extinction is pretty intense. However, now we have so much technology I feel like we would be able to track and see if a microbe were getting prepared to make us extinct. Hopefully that's the case and microbes don't end up catching us by surprise. I could definitely see this world going extinct because of a major plague that wipes our population out, and affects all living organisms. I believe this because of the change we've brought upon this world, could definitely lead to microbes evolving and developing new traits. Hopefully that won't be the case though.
ReplyDeleteMan, this article is really interesting the extinction of the dinosaurs and prehistoric era has been debated since the beginning of time, different theory's and ideas always being brought to the table, the idea of a microbe causing widespread extinction that we have to try to understand. This is what the article sounds like it is trying to do, some things to consider is maybe incorporate some of the articles weaknesses that way there is no bias introduced. I particularly like the connection you made when you had said "lack of oxygen in the air what caused these species of creatures to just start dropping like prehistoric flies." This sentence really painted the picture for me and I immediately had more attention into the analysis. All in all really good job analyzing this article it was interesting, short and sweet how it should be.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to contemplate how scientists can look at evidence today and hypothesize how events could have happened 252 million years ago.
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