Welcome to an episode of Hotel Mars with David Livingston, my colleague, co-host and copilot. Rather than go into the depths of the solar system, we're going into time to examine the Great Dying of 250 million years ago.
We're very pleased to welcome Alexander Farnsworth, a coauthor in a new study identifying drivers for the Great Dying at the end of the Permian age and the beginning of a reawakening of nature.
This is a time when there were dinosaurs (not the ones that are famous, like T-Rex and Brontosaurus—smaller versions). There was a rich sea life. And then along came this great extinction that wiped out a huge percentage of the land animals and then of the sea creatures.
This was a time when the continents were all one Pangaea, and there were two seas, one called Tethys, the other one called Panthalassic.
And these two seas and all the other creatures you want. And then they disappeared. And the land had all the creatures you want, and it disappeared. What drove that? Before Alex and his colleagues took this question on the assumption was, Oh, well, there were volcanoes, and that poisoned the air. And that led to the Great Dying.
There were problems with that explanation, so we're now going to explore. Alex does climate modeling, which is how this case was made. What does that mean?
Watch the full interview above, or listen to an audio version below:
LINKS:
CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor on YouTube
“Mega El Niño instigated the end-Permian mass extinction,” Science Magazine
The John Batchelor Show on Apple Podcasts:
The opinions expressed on this website and on The John Batchelor Show are those of John Batchelor and guests, and not those of CBS News.
Share this post