The Earth is rapidly warming, and similar climate upheavals over 300 million years ago once triggered massive fluctuations in marine life.
The Earth is rapidly warming, and similar climate upheavals over 300 million years ago once triggered massive fluctuations in marine life.
Recently, a research team led by Prof. Shuzhong Shen of Nanjing University published a major finding in Science Advances, revealing for the first time—through high-precision big data—that during the Late Paleozoic (approximately 340 to 250 million years ago), global cooling promoted rapid evolution and diversification of marine life, while abrupt warming, especially that induced by volcanic eruptions, led to mass extinctions.
The focus of the study is an ancient group of single-celled marine organisms called fusuline foraminifera. Though small in size, they were extraordinarily abundant, once dominating seafloor ecosystems and earning the nickname “carbonate rock factories.
