Occurring about 250 million years ago, before the time of the dinosaurs, volcanic eruptions destroyed the Earth’s ozone layer, nearly wiping out all life on the planet.
Known as the “Great Dying,” it was even more gruesome than the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Scientifically known as the Permian-Triassic extinction event, it happened about 250 million years ago, before the dinosaurs were born.
Volcanic eruptions destroyed the ozone layer over a period of about 1 million years.
Previously, scientists believed that the Permian-Triassic extinction event was caused by a volcanic eruption, but apparently, it was no ordinary eruption. Dubbed the “Siberian Flood Basalts” , this million-year-old eruption is estimated to have caused the deaths of 96% of marine life, along with 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species.
Scientists today believe that the volcanic eruption has caused the ozone layer to suffer very heavy damage .
Michael Broadley, a scientist and author of the study, which was published in Nature Geoscience on Monday, said the scale of the mass extinction event was so great that scientists had to self-destruct. Ask, what makes the Siberian Flood Basalts so much more destructive than other similar volcanic eruptions.
“We have come to the conclusion that there is a huge halogen reservoir in the lithosphere of Siberia that, as a result of the eruption, was released into the atmosphere during this explosion, which destroyed the ozone layer dramatically. quickly and contributed significantly to the event of mass destruction immediately afterwards”.
Basically, the volcanic eruption released Chlorine, Bromine, Iodine into the atmosphere, destroying the ozone layer in about 1 million years, and the Earth took 10 million years to recover.