Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Following Links

There's an interesting theory posted about what caused the Late Devonian Mass Extinctions. I am unsure if I buy it, but it's an interesting one: the plants did it. That is to say that as the land mases were increasingly vegetated, the ecology didn't "know" what to do with this the biomass and it ended up deposited in the ocean which contributed to the so-called Black Shales. At the same time, the plants would have rapidly drown down the CO2 levels which would cause a global cooling and glaciation.

This stands in contrast to McGhee arguing for an impact. Or Hallam et al for global anoxia. Or Ward's hypoxia hypotheses: in fact, this would stand at 180 deg opposite of Ward's. The most recent paper is from 2001, so it might have died already. Rather interesting stuff.

The proposer's website is the title link and the Devonian Times link is just below.

No comments: