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New Evidence About 'The Great Dying' 250 Million Years Ago
PornMaster writes "The Guardian is reporting that scientists have found the first direct evidence that the killoff of 80% of land species and 95% of marine species 2 billion years ago was due to a meteor." The project web site has more info, maps, etc.
more than 80% of terrestrial life?
more than 95% of marine life?
that would mean that whatever we have today, evolved from >20% / >5% of those species that survived?
that's a whole lotta evolution if you ask me.
When I heard the story on NPR yesterday, it said the event was dated at around 250 million years ago. That's what the body of the linked article says too. Somehow, the headline has been changed to say 2 billion. Funny.
I remember some Discovery piece about another giant meteor hitting around area of the Yucatan several hundred million years ago. I could swear that they were using that crator as evidence of the great die off too.
So... It's a big meteor, or a volcano or maybe, just maybe... It was caused by a verneshot
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
That said, perhaps you would field the evidentiary findings that indicate this is not true? If we have 0 'reason to believe' something else is the case, an 1 'reason to believe' this is the case, where would the smart money bet?
Thinking outside my Head
I agree. btw, jsut wondering. if this crater is the evidence of a meteor... what ever happened to the actual meteor?
Years ago, when Mariner 10 went and disovered the Caloris Basin and wierd terrain on Mercury, I immediately wondered if something like that could happen on Earth. I was one of the first to notice that the volcanic Deccan Traps that formed in India at the time of the dinosaur extinction just happened to be located (after taking contintental drift into account) on the opposite side of the Earth from Chixulub. (As I recall, I wrote a letter to Scientific American about it, way back then...but they didn't think it publishable) And now the evidence seems to be accumulating, in favor of exactly such scenarios.
I am reminded of my undergraduate geology professor's first lecture to our class. He took a candle and covered it with a jar. The candle went out. Then he asked the class for a show of hands, how many people thought the candle went out because all of the available oxygen had been consumed, and how many people thought the flame ceased because (if memory serves) the jar had become saturated with phogistan. Of course the vote was 100% for the oxygen answer. He then explained that 100 years ago, we all would have failed the exam. He then went on to discuss "vestigal organs," the fossil record, and other models that have not held up well in all cases.
His point? "Evidence" can often be made to support any number of theories, among them the 4.5 billion year age of the earth or in this case the cause of a mass extinction. In the future we will know more, but we should never assume we have all the answers right now.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
So my knowledge that 1+1=2 is probabilistic?
Now we have the volcanic Siberian outpourings of the Permian era, accompanied by a giant meteor impact in Australia (and after taking 200 megayears of continental drift into account, they could well have been on opposite sides of the Earth at that time).
First let me say that I am a Christian, and as such believe that God created life, the universe and everything. I have no idea if the seven days were literal 24 hour periods. It wouldn't bother me if they were 1 second periods. God is all powerful and there is nothing that He can not do.
That aside, I believe your arguement would be easily refuted by evolutionists. The meteor in question only killed 80% of the land animals and 95% of marine life. This means that the remaining creatures (who would have arrived supposedly from billions of years of evolution) continued to evolve. Additionally, this continued evolution would have occurred at a much faster rate given the fact that there was virtually no competition and a vastly open ecosystem to spread out and diversify in.
Now, instead of four billion years, they've got to explain in it 250 million years. Given that they've already posited that mankind's ancestors appeared about 50 million years ago, they're down to a mere 200 million years to go from single-celled to upright and walking.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The meteor killed 80% of life, not species. I'm sure there were small animals left, something like insects (that's multicelled), maybe also other small animals like lizzards that live in caves that were able to adapt. Even though most life was killed, I'm sure a lot of species survived.
And even if that wasn't true, and all multicellular life were wiped out, evolution is STILL a better theory than "The invisible man in the sky made it all with magic". That's just silly, and is a fairytale best reserved for kids.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
Actually, several clues tend to prove a meteor isn't the cause of permian extinction. For instance, there should be a thin layer of irridium (or any other stuff) coming from the meteor or its explosion/impact, and laying on the ground after the blast... Also their proof about having found the meteor impact site doesn't seem very convincing.
Now, they need to explain why we don't find such clues, and they haven't done it yet.
For now, the only convincing scenario involves volcanism and oceanic methan tanks (methan is stored inside ocean, both dissolved and inside seabed).
Big volcanism activity in what is today Siberia (and there are proofs of it) increases mean temperature for about 5-10 C by producing greenhouse effect. Then with such increase, methan starts to evaporate from ocean, induces more greenhouse effect, and mean temperature goes up 5-10C more. At the same time, it kills life in the ocean.
That 10-20C increase in mean temperature is enough to kill 80% of species on the surface of the ground.
So that scenario explains everything better than the meteor theory.
Forgive my bad English... I think that this explanation could be found on some american scientific website, so feel free to post the link.
Oh, and you can find more info there
What crap. Stop trolling. The evidence in science is based on pre-observed behaviour and hypothesis.
And they are just collecting evidence to substantiate their hypothesis.
Religious claims cannot be recreated. A scientific claim can.
Tomorrow if this is disproved, you can throw this out of the window. I'm yet to see any religious figurehead materialize before me -- that still hasn't made any religious believers throw out religion.
Science is based on assumptions, which evolve into hypothesis and are substantiated with evidence. Plain and simple. When another kind of evidence is found, science simply changes it's assumptions and hypothesis to fit the facts.
Besides, whether or not you believe it is entirely upto you. Your soul is not going to hell if you don't. It's just the most plausible thing that might have happened, and in the light of no other explanations, this seems just about right.
And look at the choice of words from the article -- they think, they believe etc. -- they do not say, we are so damn sure that THIS happened.
Have you been to the sun? How do you know it's full of Hydrogen and Helium? It's based on an assumption, that was later on substantiated with evidence (spectra of the sunlight). Have you seen a Black Hole? It was based on an assumption that it's quite likely Black hole exist, and later on they were substantiated with evidence by observation.
This is no different.
Religion merely makes claims, and has no need to substantiate nor prove. Unlike science.
And judging by your comments you know nothing of science.
Empirical claims are probabilistic. All empirical knowledge depends on the persistence of objects (and behaviors, really) in time; i.e., we acknowledge that gravity exists because it is repeatable over a sufficient number of tests for us to draw the conclusion that it will continue to be repeatable into the forseeable future. We really don't have any *reason* to believe that this is the case other than statistical analysis - "It's always been this way."
Thinking outside my Head
"Simple" and "self-happening" doesn't equate to "easily reproducible in a lab".
It's really simple to form a star: wait millions of years for a cloud of gas and dust to gravitationally collapse. It happens completely on its own. That doesn't mean it's easy for us to do it in a lab.
Okay, prove it.
Not necessarily. If you know what one object is and if you know what two objects are, then 1+1=2 becomes an empirical statement. Given one object and another object can you recognize them together as two objects?
Once you start applying a mathematical truth to the real world it starts being empirical. There is nothing inherently axiomatic about 4 sets of 3 objects being the same as 3 sets of 4 objects.
Don't bother - I know _way_ too much (engineer^2) to do anything but laugh at you.
Really.
(I also know a truckload of religious history - I just don't see why you need to mix a mythical "God" into the very sane sayings of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed)
it's in my head
I would agree that it would count as evidence of micro-evolution, but not of what is considered "macro-evolution."
Much of the arguments between creationists and evolutionists spawn from nothing much greater than a misunderstanding of what evolution is.
You seem to be missing the point...
If creationism were true, there would be no evidence at all for evolution. There would be no fossils, no radioactive decay evidence, nothing. That there is pretty convincing evidence for evolution suggests that either:
(1) it actually happened, or
(2) God put it there as some kind of sneaky plan to fool most of us into thinking creationism is ignorant nonsense.
Which of these do you choose?
"The U.S. is falling at warp speed into a dark age of ignorance, superstition and fear."
Only the Great American Heartland ("Praise jeezus, and pass me that rattlesnake!"). The Right and Left Coasts have enough cynnicism and free-thinking left (so to speak) to save it, though.
O.K. I'm an American. I've lived on the East Coast for (oh, roughly) 50 years. What's going on now is what's been going on since the original, intolerant, religious crackpots, er, our Glorious Founding Fathers, came ashore. It's a fight for mindshare.
"Truth" has nothing to do with it. It's all about control. For the past 100 years, one battle has been the Fundies vs. everybody else (the other battle has been Haves vs. Have Nots, but that one is as old as, pardon the expression, Adam).
The fundies are well organized and focused. The "rest of us" free-thinkers are disorganized and unfocused. Hey, if you're a free-thinker, you have a high tolerance for bullshit anyway.
We usually draw the line where evidence is considerable (look up the Scopes trial) or lives hang in the balance (Vietnam).
America is not sliding downhill. It's more like a drunkard's walk into a bad part of town. For goodness' sake, vote people. Vote for Homer Simpson if you have to (mmmm, WMD!), but vote, damnit!
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
Assuming Mercury is mostly solid, due to having greater surface-to-volume ratio than Earth, and geologically cooled-off faster than Earth, then if the Caloris impact did that much damage on the far side of Mercury, then on Earth any decently large strike should be able to crack open the crust on the opposite side (remember to take direction of impact into account). That should be enough to let lots of magma pour out, because it does already, whenever the crust splits open, even without a meteor impact. And because of the way impact energy spreads and reconverges on the other side of the globe, a large region of cracks should appear, all letting-loose magma, while the impact site itself is a comparatively small puncture.
The existance of fossils and strata are simply fact. They exist. Various theories about how and when they formed are not necessarly fact. However they do exist, so any theory that does not provide a way for them to exist is wrong. Simple creationist theories of how the earth was formed rely on 'God is a big practical joker who likes to mess with your head' The God of the bible doesn't do stuff like that. (IMHO)
Dating methods are many, and they all agree too well that the earth is old for any reasonable person to question. (barring the practical joker of course) See here for specifics about the trees.
People who say evolution is not true are either ignorant* of the facts, (this can be fixed through study) or they think that an evolving world is incomaptible with the existance of God, (simply not true, but you do have to drop the medievial interpretations of genisis 1 and 2, and other parts of the bible)and they have personal evidence that he exists.
*I am using ignorant to mean 'don't know', not 'stupid' here!
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Is that this damn thing is too old. As is, the Chixilub crater, at 65MY, is severely degraded, and many of the continents were close to their present locations. At the end of the Permian Era, they were all lumped into one land mass.
Even an impact crater as large as 100 miles would be so worn over that even with sensitive geologic data, it would be hard to detect. Finding evidence of shocked quartz points to some sort of impact in that area... narrowing down the date and size is the tough part.
Could this be the smoking gun? Hard to say. My guess is that numerous phenomenon combined to cause this extinction. Massive vulcanism in what is now Siberia would have causes all sorts of problems ecologically. Then you have theories on methane seeps... which could explain why ocean life suffered the worst fate... And maybe this rock was the coup de gras of the Permian Era.... the final nail on the coffin for an already stressed ecosystem.
Though, these extinction events lead life on Earth to its current path. Poor evolutionary pathes were cut off, and only hearty, adaptable species survived.