Researchers from the United States and Sweden showed that several waves of large-scale flowering of toxic blue-green algae became one of the factors of Perm extinction – the most deadly of all mass extinction in the history of the Earth. The new article of scientists was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Scientists from the University of Nebraska and the Swedish Museum of Natural History analyzed the deposits, fossils and the geochemical composition of the breeds found in the Sydney Coal basin belonging to the period of catastrophic extinction of about 252 million years ago. It turned out that immediately after the first events of volcanism there were several waves of large-scale phytoplankton blossoms.
After the childhood is extinct, the organisms feed on the decaying organic material – these blossoms had no one to stop. In addition, the mass deforestation led to washing from soils in nutrients water bodies, contributed to the further growth of the number of microalgae and bacteria. They flooded freshwater ecosystems and turned them into “toxic soup”. He became a culprit that the restoration of freshwater ecosystems in the Triassic period was delayed for three million years.
In addition, the researchers discovered similar deposits for other extinction, which indicates that blossoms of blue-green algae have repeatedly led to mass extinctions of freshwater fauna.