Limestone from an Italian town has revealed insights into a mass extinction event during the Jurassic period, something scientists refer to as “a warning from the depths.”
A research team led by Duke University (USA) discovered a significant clue in the limestone found in the outskirts of Mercato San Severino, Italy, shedding light on the mass extinction of marine life in the middle of the Jurassic period.
“This event and similar events are the best examples we have of what will happen to Earth in the coming decades and centuries” – quoted by SciTech Daily from Associate Professor Michael A. Kipp, the lead researcher.
The limestone collected from the Mercato San Severino area in southern Italy contains molecular traces of ancient ocean chemistry – (Photo: Mariano Remírez/GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY).
During the Jurassic period, as marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs thrived, volcanic activity in what is now South Africa released approximately 20,500 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) over more than 500,000 years.
This massive release of gas heated the oceans, causing them to lose oxygen.
Research on the limestone sediments, which carry chemicals dating back to the volcanic eruptions, indicates that at one point, oxygen levels completely dropped in 8% of the ancient ocean floor, an area three times the size of present-day America.
This led to marine life suffocating and experiencing a mass extinction 183 million years ago.
There is a frightening aspect: “The specter of past death is returning, due to humanity itself.”
Since the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th and 19th centuries, human activities have emitted an amount of CO2 equivalent to 12% of the emissions during the Jurassic volcanic period.
However, Associate Professor Kipp noted that the current rate of CO2 release into the atmosphere is unprecedented in history, making it difficult to predict when another mass extinction might occur or how severe it could be.
Nevertheless, human activities are more than capable of triggering a catastrophic event similar to that of the Jurassic period. Clearly, human greenhouse gas emissions are causing some ocean regions to lose oxygen.
“This warning from the depths” not only threatens marine life but also poses a threat to all life on the planet, including humans. A mass extinction event that causes such ecological imbalance will always have a global impact.
The new research has just been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
