September 18, 2006
1 min read
Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmImpact from the Deep: Overview/Mass Extinctions
By Peter D. Ward
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More than half of all life on the earth has been wiped out, repeatedly, in mass extinctions over the past 500 million years.
One such disaster, which included the dinosaurs' disappearance, is widely attributed to an asteroid impact, but others remain inadequately explained.
New fossil and geochemical evidence points to a shocking environmental mechanism for the largest of the ancient mass extinctions and possibly several more: an oxygen-depleted ocean spewing poisonous gas as a result of global warming.
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