Earth has experienced two great extinctions

A meteorite plunged into Earth 65 million years ago, causing the dinosaurs to become extinct, but scientists said that there had been another major extinction when the volcano erupted and the planet warmed kill most creatures living in the sea.

Scientists at the University of Washington (USA) think that Earth has faced two major extinctions. They assumed that at the time of the great extinction of the dinosaurs when a meteorite plunged into our planet 65 million years ago, undersea creatures almost disappeared and only remains mainly clams and snails .

The volcanic eruption is thought to have caused the first major extinction on Earth.

The reason explained by the research team is due to the impact of the giant volcanic eruptions in the Deccan plateau region of India today before the Earth collided with meteorites. Volcanic eruptions cause sea water to warm up and destroy most marine species.

The scientists' conclusions came after they studied rock and fossil samples in Antarctic sediments. Then, they used magnetostratigraphy method based on Earth magnetic field to determine the fossil age.

'Volcanoes began erupting around 300,000 to 200,000 years before the meteorite struck Earth and the impact of this disaster lasted for 1,000 years,' said Thomas Tobin, head of the University of Washington research team. said on the Daily Mail.

Volcanic eruptions can be released into the atmosphere of small particles or aerosols, which can initially cool the Earth, but the volcanic eruption also produces CO ₂ and other greenhouse gases. Our planet warms for a long time.

Thomas Tobin said: 'The aerosol only has a cooling effect for a period of 1 to 10 years, while the CO ₂ has an effect from hundreds of years to 10,000 years. However, the group of species destroyed in the first great extinction still appears on the beach today. '