Researchers from China, the Netherlands and Norway blamed the Permian extinction - the most catastrophic in the history of the Earth - due to the sharp rise in temperatures due to the volcanoes of the Siberian Trap province of large volumes of carbon dioxide. The article of specialists was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists have added carbon isotope ratios from the lipids found in fossilized algae and plants into the model that describes the earth. The calculations performed and the dating refinement made with the help of astrochronology showed that large-scale (more than 36 thousand gigatons) and fast (an average of five gigatons per year in 109 thousand years) carbon emission is explained by large-scale volcanism in the Siberian traps.
“Our calculations show that the main source of the increase in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide was two large emissions from volcanoes. Its concentration in the air increased from 400 ppm by volume to ten thousand, which led to an extremely sharp rise in temperatures at the end of the Permian mass extinction,”- said one of the authors of the work, Professor at the University of Oslo Wolfram Kürschner.
