30-million mass extinction recovery
It took life on Earth around 30 million years to recover from the largest extinction event of all time, according to new research.
About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, more than 90 per cent of life on Earth was killed off by the atmospheric and landscape changes caused by huge volcanic eruptions in Russia.
Previous research into this mass extinction had focused on the number of species, and presumed that life recovered relatively quickly, but new research by earth scientists at the University of Bristol looked at ecosystems and found that they actually took much longer to recover.
Sarda Sahney, who carried out the research as part of her PhD, said: ‘Although the number of animals bounced back quite quickly, the ecosystems they formed were dramatically restructured, and the complexity of these systems didn’t recover for 30 million years.’
Certain opportunistic organisms – or ‘disaster taxa’ – thrived in the aftermath of the eruptions. For example, a pig-sized herbivore belonging to the genus Lystrosaurus, or shovel reptile, flourished in the inhospitable conditions. In contrast, entire eocosystems such as forests and coral reefs were largely absent from the planet for 20 million years.
Sahney’s findings were published in the biology journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B in a paper co-authored by palaeontologist Professor Michael Benton, who hopes that their conclusions can be used to make predictions about the future of life on Earth.
‘By accurately documenting what happened in the past, we can constrain our models of the future and create a robust branch of futurology that is more than just guesswork,’ he said.
About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, more than 90 per cent of life on Earth was killed off by the atmospheric and landscape changes caused by huge volcanic eruptions in Russia.
Previous research into this mass extinction had focused on the number of species, and presumed that life recovered relatively quickly, but new research by earth scientists at the University of Bristol looked at ecosystems and found that they actually took much longer to recover.
Sarda Sahney, who carried out the research as part of her PhD, said: ‘Although the number of animals bounced back quite quickly, the ecosystems they formed were dramatically restructured, and the complexity of these systems didn’t recover for 30 million years.’
Certain opportunistic organisms – or ‘disaster taxa’ – thrived in the aftermath of the eruptions. For example, a pig-sized herbivore belonging to the genus Lystrosaurus, or shovel reptile, flourished in the inhospitable conditions. In contrast, entire eocosystems such as forests and coral reefs were largely absent from the planet for 20 million years.
Sahney’s findings were published in the biology journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B in a paper co-authored by palaeontologist Professor Michael Benton, who hopes that their conclusions can be used to make predictions about the future of life on Earth.
‘By accurately documenting what happened in the past, we can constrain our models of the future and create a robust branch of futurology that is more than just guesswork,’ he said.
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