Seth Young

FSU researchers: Rapid fluctuations in oxygen levels coincided with Earth’s first mass extinction

Rapid changes in marine oxygen levels may have played a significant role in driving Earth’s first mass extinction, according to a new study led by Florida State University researchers. About 443 million years ago, life on Earth was undergoing the Late Ordovician mass extinction, or LOME, which eliminated about 85% of marine species. Scientists have […]

Researchers find low oxygen and sulfide in the oceans played greater role in ancient mass extinction

Florida State University researchers have new insight into the complicated puzzle of environmental conditions that characterized the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME), which killed about 85% of the species in the ocean. Their work on the 445-million-year-old mass extinction event was published online in the journal AGU Advances on Monday. “We found that reducing conditions […]

In ancient oceans that resembled our own, oxygen loss triggered mass extinction

Roughly 430 million years ago, during the Earth’s Silurian Period, global oceans were experiencing changes that would seem eerily familiar today. Melting polar ice sheets meant sea levels were steadily rising, and ocean oxygen was falling fast around the world. At around the same time, a global die-off known among scientists as the Ireviken extinction […]