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Hamed Sanei, NRCan / University of Calgary
The coal‑ash particle on the left is from the latest Permian extinction boundary at Buchanan Lake, Nunavut. The particle on the right is from a modern power plant.
The explosive burning of coal seams in Siberia a quarter-billion years ago may have contributed to a mass extinction event that wiped out about 95 percent of marine life and 70 percent of life on land, a new study reports.
Scientists have long thought that massive volcanic eruptions in Russia's Siberian Traps were responsible for the Permian-Triassic extinction, though many have argued that such a deadly blow likely needed an extra push.
Stephen Grasby, a geochemist with the Geological Survey of Canada in Alberta, and his colleagues found charred particles in Permian-aged rocks from the Canadian Arctic that resemble modern coal fly ash, the toxic particles released when coal is in burned in coal-fired power plants.
"This could literally be the smoking gun that explains the latest Permian extinction," he said in a news release.
The finding implies that magma in the Siberian Traps ignited coal deposits in the surrounding area, creating explosions that sent plumes of coal ash billowing into the skies. These clouds would have dispersed the coal ash around the world.
"It was a really bad time on Earth," Grasby said. "In addition to these volcanoes causing fires through coal, the ash it spewed was highly toxic and was released in the land and water, potentially contributing to the worst extinction event in earth history."
Many scientists believe we are in the throes of the sixth great mass extinction in earth's history, largely due to the impact of humans on the planet, including our reliance on burning coal for energy.
Findings were published Sunday in Nature Geoscience. For more details on the study, check out this piece in Nature News.
More stories on coal fly ash and mass extinctions:
- Environmentalists challenge EPA stats on coal ash
- Arsenic, radium levels high at ash spill site
- Coal ash spill turns scenic area into muddy pit
- What triggers mass extinctions?
- Earth's Timeline: How to tell your Triassic from your Jurassic
- Did poison bacteria set up Permian-Triassic extinction?
- Did cosmic impact contribute to Permian-Triassic die-off?
- Fungus feasted on Triassic leftovers from extinction
- Mass extinction threat: Earth on verge of huge reset button?
- Devonian die-off teaches grim lesson
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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"Many scientists believe we are in the throes of the sixth great mass extinction in earth's history, largely due to the impact of humans on the planet, including our reliance on burning coal for energy."
yaaaaawn! Can't I read even one article about the Earth's geologic history without the compulsory guilt trip?
Yeah, the article was interesting up to that point.
Duh, this is MSNBC. Just because the Leftist-in-Chief left does not mean MSNBC is any less leftist. The sky is falling, the sky is falling . . .
"compulsory guilt trip?" is part of their DNA!
ha ha..... what are you talking about??...
this article is telling the story of about 250 millions year ago.... there is no connection with human.
If such an event happened, it caused death due to the swiftness of the act. It was probably like a giant Yellowstone event. Our burning fossil fuels today allows the Earth time to mend itself. Acute actions and results are a lot different than chronic actions and results.
Unless there is another Acute event we will be here a long time from now. Our way of life may not be the same as it is now, but who are we to say that the Earth MUST stay like it is now or like it was hundreds of years ago?
People like to think we are destroying the Earth, but today there is more forested areas in America than there was at the time of Columbus. There is a book called "Maize" everyone should read. It tells about the size of Indian villiages during the time of Colombus. There was a native village in Ohio that was bigger than the town of London in the same time period. They had corn fields that were estimated at 50,000 square miles that produced 20 bushels of corn per acre along with squash, beans and other crops interspersed between the hillocks. All were created using slash and burn techniques.
During the time of Nicolet, there were native farms on the Wisconsin's Door Peninsula that were growing corn. Because of the modern growth of trees, the rock lined fields made by the native tribe of that area are no longer seen from the cliffs above, but there are pictures of them from the early days of Green Bay when the farmers cleared the land to farm after driving the natives out.
don't you ever think that "Our burning fossil fuels today allows the Earth time to mend itself". you don't know that it takes millions of year for an organic matter to get converted into fossil fuel like oil. You must see the work of M. King Hubbert. I don't Know about the book called "Maize". But you just search that how much electricity and fuel we are consuming now and what was the scenario 100 year ago?
SO, smoking really DID kill the dinosaurs.
Actually, much as I enjoy the occasional Gary Larson reference, as the timeline suggested in the article above explains, the Permian-Triassic extinction was 250 million years ago - i.e., it was what killed the pre-existing flora/fauna and made room for the dinosaurs to evolve (much as the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago made room for our mammalian ancestors to expand their niches).
Okay, okay, so smoking killed the gorgonopsids. The joke's still funny.
Jeez
Just look at the links at the top of this page. They include several links to other articles claiming other causes for the die off.
Instantly questions the independence of the author.
The crap about coal cinched it.
This article is nonsense.
This is good evidence and is a better theory / explanation than a gamma ray burst.
But, I thought the dinosaurs became coal? *snicker, snicker*
NOOOO...the carboniferous resulted in coal as a result of vegetation being buried. Dino's were
a minor source of cola.
How come so many scientists think we are going through a mass extinction but they can't list any species that have recently gone extinct? Certainly not from any environmental causes. Man hunting to extinction or destroying habitat has nothing to do with coal or environmental changes.
"How come so many scientists think we are going through a mass extinction but they can't list any species that have recently gone extinct?"
Many species go extinct every day around the world. It is not very common in the U.S. anymore, although the number endangered still increases.
@jack59801: what are you talking about??....
i think you have not read the whole story.... they are talking about mass extinction which occurred millions of years ago.... its not about one or two species .... its abt thousands of species.... which were extinct frm the earth instantly..
avinegi, he was answering the previous poster, which was mostly unrelated to the story
What all these mass extinction theories ignore is the time scale of the extinctions, which occurred in a geological "instant," ie half a million years or so. A zoologist considers that to be a lot of generations. Even an extinction in a mere ten thousand years cannot have resulted from a sudden event.
my mother went extinct 10days ago..she was 89....smoking got her...story sounds plausible to me;-)
The "extra push" may have actually been a triple punch of an initial major impact event, similar to the Chixulub impact which happened 65 million years ago and is linked to the KT boundary extinction of the dinos. That event is also possibly tied to the Deccan traps lava massive flows in India, which I have theorized may have actually been caused by the impact in the Yucatan, which is roughly at the antipodal or opposite location on the earth's surface. I conjecture that the impact force in the Chixulub case was transmitted spherically around the planet through massive vibrational waves (earthquakes) and refocused at the oppositional Deccan site, resulting in the massive eruptions there. There is apparently some conflicting evidence which suggests that the impact happened after the eruptions, so the argument is not yet ironclad.
In the Permian extinction event, in which the current authors link the known massive eruptions to a possible gigantic conflagration of coal deposits, could there be a case for a massive impact event as the initial trigger for the entire scenario? Is there an enormous crater anywhere in the far southern hemisphere which could possibly have happened at the correct antipodal location at the correct time? There is a possible candidate. Check out this link regarding the Wilkes Land Crater in Antarctica.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkes_Land_crater
It's possibly an enormous impact crater, presently hidden deep below the Antarctic ice. If geological sampling could be used to date the structure and it did indeed match the timing of the Permian extinction event, 251 Million years ago, then I think I've got a stronger case.
Anyone want to fund a trip to Antarctica to go crater hunting?
Yes, I've read some articles about the Shiva structure and it is indeed controversial. It doesn't fit my antipodal impact hypothesis at all, but that's not really the main point. It's not circular in shape. As I understand it, it's apparently rather oblong, and could possibly be the result of an angular or oblique angled strike, but the evidence is unclear. It could also be two parallel submarine mountain ranges which formed by natural tectonic processes.
There's also a large submarine impact structure (a crater at the bottom of the ocean) off the coast of Western australia which apparently dates to just about the right time for the permian event. This also might be the one could have triggered the Siberian traps eruptions according to my antipodal imapact hypothesis.
Anyone know of a simple and controllable plate tectonics modeling program which can be "rewound" backwards to a specific point in time to see where everything supposedly was at a particular moment in history, say... 251 million years ago?
All this time I thought the last extinction event was caused by the arrival (planned crash really) of the Golgafrinchan Ark B ship which unleashed telephone santizers, hairdressers, mid-level managers and marketing people on the earth. Deciding that leaves would be a good currency, they burned down most of the forests in an effort to get a handle on runaway inflation. The native semi-sentient life of the planet died off and the golgafrinchans descendants rule the planet to this day.
lol. So long and thanks for all the fish.
It was the green leaves that got them. They thought they were real money. We have the same problem today.
It's the permo-triassic distinction.
The Permian Extinction took how many million years to play out? I am concerned over climate change and how it will affect humanity. It will not be the end of the world, it may just be the end of us and the ecology we are familiar with. I do believe we should take steps to limit the change caused by us.
I believe we are certainly a major factor contributing to climate change and the overall effects don't sound good for our species. We will need to develop new agricultural methods and crops to cope with the changing conditions or a lot of people are going to starve. I am more concerned by the changes in precipitation as that is a more immediate worry. Many parts of the world , including the western US are going to face massive pressure on water resources unless we learn how to capture downpours as snow decreases and heavy rain increases.
I'm not sure how we and much of our ecology will cope with the increeasing heat but we will see.
You are right, lanm, we should start now building a transpacific pipeline to transport excess Australian fresh water to the soon-to-be-arid Great Plains of the North American west. In the interval before this is really needed, we could send unwanted North American politicians to Australia, where there will be a shortage of hot air.
How is this relevant to today, you ask? At the very least, as a cautionary tale. As bad as coal-based plant emissions can be, they pale in comparison to the effects of coal ash, as it is allowed to be disposed of currently, on the health of people living in the vicinity of these vast, toxic impoundments. In the U.S., new EPA “regulations" concerning coal ash are being bought with coal dollars, and abetted by pro-industry puppeteers with their hands on Obama’s strings. The coal industry’s growing list of paid apologists now includes CNN, which, according to the following After the Press video report, aired a story recently about a giant coal ash dump on the W. Va./Penn border – with the “report" in fact sponsored by an airbrushed spot for The Coalition for Clean Coal: