Experts analyzed rock samples in Hudson Bay and found that the number of organisms on Earth had plummeted due to changes in oxygen levels.
80 – 99.5% of ancient organisms on Earth may have died due to environmental changes after the oxygen disaster (GOE) 2 – 2.4 billion years ago , Newsweek on September 2 announced the results of the study. research by scientists. The team of experts was surprised when they analyzed rock samples dating back billions of years in Hudson Bay, Canada, and found traces of this event. This is the period when the amount of oxygen on Earth increases and then suddenly drops sharply.
The Earth has experienced many large-scale extinctions. (Photo: NASA/GSFC).
“About 100-200 million years before the event, there was a lot of life on Earth. After that, a large number of them died out without recovering like recent extinctions,” said Peter Crockford, co-author of the study. research pseudo-research.
“It’s not entirely appropriate to call this event a mass extinction, as we will probably never know exactly which species disappeared. However, it seems likely that the number of organisms on Earth at that time was already gone. plummeted,” he added.
The new discovery could help scientists predict Earth’s distant future, according to Crockford. “Like two billion years ago, today’s biosphere (including humans) depends on the foundation of the food chain, which is microorganisms in the sea and plants on the ground. It is very likely that the amount of oxygen will not change. It changes so fast and so much that it makes people pay too much attention, but it can completely change in the next few billion years,” he said.
The most serious extinction event known to science was the Permian – Triassic Great Extinction about 252 million years ago. This event caused 96% of marine animals and 73% of terrestrial vertebrates to disappear.