FSP-Microcosm News-Global Community Report: Permian Mass Extinction Paved Way for the Rise of Mammals and Intelligent Life. Replay of Ancient "Greenhouse World"?

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Permian Mass Extinction Paved Way for the Rise of Mammals and Intelligent Life. Replay of Ancient "Greenhouse World"?

August 28, 2013

Permian Mass Extinction Paved Way for the Rise of Mammals and Intelligent Life

The first mammals arose in the Triassic period, more than 225 million years ago, including small shrew-like animals such as Morganucodon from England, Megazostrodon from South Africa and Bienotherium from China. They had differentiated teeth (incisors, canines, molars) and large brains and were probably warm-blooded and covered in fur – all characteristics that stand them apart from their reptile ancestors, and which contribute to their huge success today.

However, new research suggests that this array of unique features arose gradually over a long span of time, and that the first mammals may have arisen as a result of the end-Permian mass extinction - which wiped out 90 per cent of marine organisms and 70 per cent of terrestrial species.
“Mass extinctions are seen as entirely negative. However, in this case, cynodont therapsids, which included a very small number of species before the extinction, really took off afterwards and were able to adapt to fill many different niches in the Triassic - from carnivores to herbivoresm,” said Dr Marcello Ruta, lead author and evolutionary palaeobiologist from the University of Lincoln.
"During the Triassic, the cynodonts split into two groups, the cynognathians and the probainognathians," added
co-author Dr Jennifer Botha-Brink of the National Museum in Bloemfontein, South Africa. "The first were mainly plant-eaters, the second mainly flesh-eaters and the two groups seemed to rise and fall at random - first one expanding, and then the other. In the end, the probainognathians became the most diverse and most varied in adaptations, and they gave rise to the first mammals some 25 million years after the mass extinction."

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the Daily Galaxy

August 06, 2013

EcoAlert: Replay of Ancient "Greenhouse World"? -- Dramatically Altered Coral Reefs & Marine Life

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If history's closest analog is any indication, the look of the oceans will change drastically in the future as the coming greenhouse world alters marine food webs and gives certain species advantages over others. For the past million years, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have never exceeded 280 parts per million, but industrialization, forest clearing, agriculture, and other human activities have rapidly increased concentrations of CO2 and other gases known to create a "greenhouse" effect that traps heat in the atmosphere. For several days in May 2013, CO2 levels exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in human history and that milestone could be left well behind in the next decades. At its current pace, Earth could recreate the CO2 content of the atmosphere in the greenhouse world in just 80 years.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, paleobiologist Richard Norris and colleagues show that the ancient greenhouse world had few large reefs, a poorly oxygenated ocean, tropical surface waters like a hot tub, and food webs that did not sustain the abundance of large sharks, whales, seabirds, and seals of the modern ocean. Aspects of this greenhouse ocean could reappear in the future if greenhouse gases continue to rise at current accelerating rates.
The researchers base their projections on what is known about the "greenhouse world" of 50 million years ago when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were much higher than those that have been present during human history. Their review article appears in an Aug. 2 special edition of the journal Science titled "Natural Systems in Changing Climates."
In the greenhouse world, fossils indicate that CO2 concentrations reached 800-1,000 parts per million. Tropical ocean temperatures reached 35º C (95º F), and the polar oceans reached 12°C (53°F) -- similar to current ocean temperatures offshore San Francisco. There were no polar ice sheets. Scientists have identified a "reef gap" between 42 and 57 million years ago in which complex coral reefs largely disappeared and the seabed was dominated by piles of pebble-like single-celled organisms called foraminifera.
"The 'rainforests-of-the-sea' reefs were replaced by the 'gravel parking lots' of the greenhouse world," said Norris.
The greenhouse world was also marked by differences in the ocean food web with large parts of the tropical and subtropical ocean ecosystems supported by minute picoplankton instead of the larger diatoms typically found in highly productive ecosystems today. Indeed, large marine animals -- sharks, tunas, whales, seals, even seabirds -- mostly became abundant when algae became large enough to support top predators in the cold oceans of recent geologic times.

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