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That's what an international team of researchers led by Professor Xiao-Ming Liu (University of North Carolina, Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences), her PhD student Cheng Cao (now postdoctoral fellow, Nanjing University) and her former postdoctoral scholar Clément P. Bataille (now Associate Professor, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Ottawa), investigated over a six-year span. Their findings are published today in Nature Geosciences. Where the understudy takes on a lead role

We do not know if we will ever again see the equivalent of the siberian traps.  We can see a super volcano at work, but that is likely to be a protracted event able to slightly increase global CO2 and would currently be welcome even if the volcano dropped global temperature by a degree or two.

 

we are looking for a huge hot spot surfacing and maintain something the size of Iceland and traveling over millions of years across a long arc.  Think the Hawaian chain on steroids.

 

Now think of hte Hawaian hot spot passing through Siberia which it probably did.  The good news is any repetition is likely a bilkiion years away.

 

 

New research demonstrates incredible connection between climate and Earth’s ability to replenish itself

 

Hint: Every microorganism plays a vital role in our survival

 

 

 

Model of Radiolarion, at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Photo credit: Victoria Pickering – CC license via Flicker.

 

 

 

Some 250 million years ago – long before dinosaurs roamed the earth – global warming and acid ocean caused by the rapid volcanic emission of the Siberian Traps led to the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, which resulted in the elimination of over 95 percent of marine and 70 percent of terrestrial life.

 

Then Mother Nature did what it does best – replenish itself. But why did it take her so long to do so?

 

That’s what an international team of researchers led by Professor Xiao-Ming Liu (University of North Carolina, Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences), her PhD student Cheng Cao (now postdoctoral fellow, Nanjing University) and her former postdoctoral scholar Clément P. Bataille (now Associate Professor, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Ottawa), investigated over a six-year span. Their findings are published today in Nature Geosciences.

 

Where the understudy takes on a lead role

 

Their study demonstrates the incredible connection between life, climate, and Earth’s habitability to replenish itself. And the impact that the disappearance of a single organism (in this case, a single group of tiny marine organisms, the radiolarians) contributed to making the Earth almost un-habitable for millions of years.

 

Their main message is that every single organism on this planet plays a sometimes hidden yet critical role to regulate biogeochemical cycles and that it should encourage us to lean into the conservation, and stewardship of our planet.

 

We sat down with professor Bataille to learn more about this study and its impact:

 

 

Professor Bataille, please explain what your big discovery was.

 

Clément Bataille: With this study, we propose a solution to explain the protracted recovery of life after the most severe mass extinction event, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction (The Permian extinction was caused by the massive volcanic eruption of the Siberian Traps and the associated warming and ocean acidification which eliminated over 95 percent of marine and 70 percent of terrestrial species.). For decades, scientists have been puzzled by the absence of life recovery after this mass extinction combined with the persistence of inhabitable environmental conditions on the Planet. The typical regulation mechanisms observed after other mass extinction events, particularly chemical weathering, appeared to have been unsuccessful at returning the Earth to more habitable conditions after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. It took more than 5 million years after the end of massive Siberian Traps volcanism for life to recover in the Early Triassic. We demonstrate that this protracted recovery can be explained by an increase in reverse weathering in the ocean driven by the extinction of little microorganisms called radiolarians. This understudied mechanism would have maintained a hot greenhouse climate and acid oceans for millions of years, preventing life to recover. Only when those radiolarians reappeared after several million years was the Earth able to return to habitable conditions and life to recover fully.