Earth's 62-million-year Ctrl-Alt-Delete cycle, page 1
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Topic started on 10-3-2005 @ 08:52 PM by whita
Interesting article about a cycle of mass extinction every 62 million years. Given that the last one was about 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs, it could be said to be currently relevant.

Are we seeing the start with things like extreme weather globally and even the Tsunami and other geologic activivity? Well maybe not, but little bits of info like this that keep cropping up suggest "something" is happening. Who knows, I'll be keeping an eye on it, but won't be barricading myself in a cave anytime just yet. Interestingly they mention Planet X in it also.

Mass extinction comes every 62 million years, UC physicists discover

"With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years"

"We've tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction," Muller said, "and so far, we've failed."

But the cycles are so clear that the evidence "simply jumps out of the data," said James Kirchner

Perhaps, they suggested, there's an unknown "Planet X" somewhere far out beyond the solar system that's disturbing the comets in the distant region called the Oort Cloud -- where they exist by the millions -- to the point that they shower the Earth and cause extinctions in regular cycles.



(edit to fix link)


[edit on 11-3-2005 by pantha]


reply posted on 13-3-2005 @ 12:02 PM by Off_The_Street
krt1967 says:

"First what species survived these wipe outs? And if a few humans did...how?"

It depends on the particular one, The Cretaceous-Cenozoic (K-T) one, where the dinosaurs were killed off about 69 million years ago, killed most large land animals, and quite a few sea critters, too.

But there were no humans or even remote ancestors of humans at the latest die-out. Indeed, the only mammals that existed at the time -- as far as I know -- were small shrew-like critters.

It was almost definitely caused by an asterioid strike in what is not the Yucatan Peninsula, which may have set off a tremendous set of volcanic disturbances in what is now India.

The one before was worse; it killed off aobut 80 percent of all species -- land and water both. It may have been caused by a comet or asteroid strike too, but we don't know for sure. We do know there was a tremendouos series of eruptions in what is now Siberia.

The earliest one was when the Earth's atmosphere, then comprising methane and ammonia, brecame, through a series of reactions, inundated with a corrosive poison which destroyed 99 percent of the existing (mostly microscopic) life. that corrosive poison was oxygen, and a whole new set of life forms arose which actually used it and here we are.

But in the case of the asteroid strike and the volcanic activity, the probable killer was the incredible amounts of dust flung up into the stratosphere , blocking the sun's warmth and resulting in a winter that maight've laster for a thousand years. The cold and darkness would have stopped photosynthesis in plants which slowed oxygen production and also resulted in the starvation of the plant-eating critters, which resulted in the starvation of the carnivorous critters.

"Where were the hardest hit areas?"

The Chicxulub strike was in what is not Mexico, so that whole area was pretty messed up. But the long-term effects from the layer of stratospheric dust, were planet-wide.

"And lastly does anyone have a clue as to the process?"

Various; see above.


reply posted on 13-3-2005 @ 12:03 PM by Off_The_Street
Toolmaker, you're absolutely right.

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