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11.S: Summary

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    22657
    • Callan Bentley, Karen Layou, Russ Kohrs, Shelley Jaye, Matt Affolter, and Brian Ricketts
    • OpenGeology

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    To recap these mass extinctions, here is a summary table, in chronological order:

    Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): Summary table.

    Name Date % extinct*
    (taxonomic loss)    		 Putative cause
    Great Oxygenation Event 2.4-2.0 Ga ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Cyanobacterial pollution of the atmosphere
    Cambrian Explosion ~539 Ma all the Ediacara Hard parts arms race
    Late Ordovician ~445 Ma 52% Global cooling
    Late Devonian ~372 Ma 40% Excessive carbon burial due to the advent of trees + global cooling
    End-Permian 260-252 Ma 83% Ocean anoxia induced by eruption of the Siberian Traps
    End-Triassic 201 Ma 73% Global warming induced by the eruption of CAMP
    End-Cretaceous 66 Ma 40% Meteorite impact \(\pm\) Deccan Traps
    Eocene-Oligocene 34 Ma 15% Global cooling
    Pleistocene 18-10 ka (just megafauna) Human overhunting
    The end of all life on Earth 1.6 billion years in the future (?) 100% Sun expanding & overheating the planet

    *Most numerical estimates from McGhee, et al. (2013).

    This page titled 11.S: Summary was last modified on Thu, 11 Apr 2024 22:50:49 GMT and is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Callan Bentley, Karen Layou, Russ Kohrs, Shelley Jaye, Matt Affolter, and Brian Ricketts (OpenGeology) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.