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The Mother of All Extinctions The article deals with the question that has been argued about by biologists and geologists for many years now. In the history of Earth, there were a number of mass extinction events that left their track in the geological record. This particular article addresses the largest one that ever happened, The Permian extinction which took place about 250 million years ago and destroyed 90 % of all living forms on Earth. Until recent time, the Permian extinction was not something that attracted much attention, the main reason being that it was thought to occur over millions of years, being a natural consequence of changes in Earth conditions. However, later discoveries in the field narrowed it down to 10000 years and the most recent radioactive surveys of fossils conducted by geologists showed that it could have been something very quick, like an overnight event. There are a number of theories on what may have caused an extinction event this great.
One of most popular is the collision of Earth with some large cometh or meteorite. Such collision would produce a great amount of energy, producing a massive explosion. Apart destroying everything proximal to the site of collision, the meteorite would also produce toxic gases and raise a great amount of soil into the atmosphere, blocking the sunlight. The combination of these factors would lead to extermination of most plants, disrupting most food chains. The strong side of this theory is that meteorites have already been known to cause such mass extinction events and the analyses of gases trapped in carbon lattices (fullerene's) show the argon and helium isotope ratios common to meteorites and not Earth.
Although the fossils of that period lack fractured quartz crystals and glass fragments, known to accompany such events, this could be explained by either the impact taking place in the ocean, which wouldnt produce these symptoms. Other theories include an extended series of volcanic eruptions that produce effects similar to those of the collision with a meteorite. This theory doesnt seem to be valid for it would take quite a long time for volcanoes to produce such effects, and the extinction seems to have been abrupt. The article appears to be aimed at general readers, for it was structured not as a scientific article that just presents the information as dry facts and analyses it. The article is filled with various descriptive idioms that help readers that are not familiar with the subject to get a better picture of what the mass extinction event is like and what the possible causes of such events can be. This impression is deepened by the lack of scientific terms.
When the author was forced to use a term that might be new to the audience, such as fullerene's, he explained it well in the text. The authors done a good job of staying impersonal and not taking sides while providing the material. A good question addressing the issues raised by this article would be exploring the differences between a number of species that went extinct, such as trilobites, and species that survived, such as starfish and clams. What were the differences and what crucial advantage did they give to these organisms?
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Research essay sample on Permian Extinction Mass Extinction
