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Ancient sea creatures stirred things in the Earth's atmosphere hundreds of millions of years ago, digging into the bottom of the ocean. 19659004] What do humans have in common with the first animals that appeared on Earth? We are both responsible for global warming phenomena (although man-made climate change is growing – and accelerating – over decades, rather than over millions of years) .
There are about 520 million to 540 million years ago The oceans of the Earth, with various marine creatures that actively dig into the sediments of the sea floor and pick up organic matter. According to a new study, they have unwittingly sown the seeds of a global climate crisis.
These early animals did not know much, but over the next 100 million years, their landfill habits would result in a significant accumulation of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide ( CO2) in the atmosphere of the planet. Scientists have recently used mathematical models to relate the emergence of these animals to an important global warming phenomenon millions of years later, which caused massive extinctions at the very moment when evolution animals began, according to the researchers
Oops. About 540 million years ago, creatures that dug tunnels in marine sediments at the time were comparable to the worms, molluscs, and arthropods that now inhabit the ocean floor, said the United States. The author of the study, Sebastiaan van de Velde, doctoral candidate. with the analytical department, environment and geochemistry of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, told Live Science in an email. [These Bizarre Sea Monsters Once Ruled the Ocean]
During the millions of years that preceded the evolution of these diggers, the ocean floor was covered with carpets of thick, undisturbed microbes. "The presence and activity of animals in the seabed – just like worms in garden soils – stimulates the decomposition of organic matter," Van de Velde explains.
"The presence and activity of animals in the seabed stimulate the decomposition of organic matter. in sediments, "he said,
As these animals spread, they transformed the seabed wherever they lived, digging and mixing soils and organic matter and, when digging, they mixed soil and organic matter. they fed on processed organic matter, they ate oxygen and released CO2, "a bit like the burning of fossil fuels," said Van de Velde
. meant less oxygen in the ocean and in the atmosphere but also led to accumulations of atmospheric CO2 in amounts sufficient to warm the whole world, the researchers reported. Van de Velde told Live Science
The evidence in the geological report already indicated a period in the Earth's past – about 100 million years after the first animals appeared – when CO2 levels and tem The researchers have suspected that this change has occurred in response to the mass recycling of marine animals from undisturbed microbe carpets, according to the study.
Fossils told scientists that these animals dug only 0.4 to 1.2 inches (1 to 3 centimeters) below the surface, while their modern counterparts dig to nearly 10 times that depth. Yet their models demonstrated that even such tiny efforts could be dramatic enough to trigger global change, driving conditions that made survival of the tiny gravediggers more difficult, according to the study.
The example of these ancient creatures changing their world into one that was ultimately harmful to them provides an "interesting parallel" to much faster climate change driven by humans today, wrote co-author Tim Lenton, professor of climate change and earth system science at the University of Exeter UK "We are creating a warmer world with the expansion of the world. ocean anoxia – a deficiency of oxygen – which is bad for us and for many other creatures with whom we share the planet, "said Lenton
. were published online today (July 2) in the journal Nature Communications
Original article on Live Science.
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