COSEE Ocean Systems: News
Ancient whodunit may be solved: The microbes did it!
Description: Fossil remains show that sometime around 252 million years ago, about 90 percent of all species on Earth were suddenly wiped out - by far the largest of this planet's five known mass extinctions. A new work suggests the perpetrators were a form of microbes - specifically, methane-producing archaea called Methanosarcina - that suddenly bloomed explosively in the oceans, spewing prodigious amounts of methane into the atmosphere and dramatically changing the climate and the chemistry of the oceans. [Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology News]
URL: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/ancient-whodunit-may-be-solved-microbes-did-it
Availability: Full Text
Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology News
Publish Date: 3/31/2014
Reading Level: Basic
Page Length:  

<< BACK