PARIS: It has been considered since long that catastrophic events like vast meteorite impacts as well as volcanic super-eruptions are related to mass extinctions. But it seems the world’s first known mass extinction, which occurred approximately 540 million years ago, was a result of evolution.
According to Simon Darroch, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University, people have remained slow in recognizing that biological organisms could also lead to mass extinction.
According to Darroch, “But our comparative study of several communities of Ediacarans, the world’s first multicellular organisms, strongly supports the hypothesis that it was the appearance of complex animals capable of altering their environments, which we define as ‘ecosystem engineers,’ that resulted in the Ediacaran’s disappearance”.
In the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the study appeared in the paper “Biotic replacement and mass extinction of the Ediacara biota” that was published on September 2.
According to Darroch, a powerful correlation is there between first mass extinction on Earth and what is occurring at present. Darroch added that the end-Ediacaran extinction suggests that the evolution of new behaviors could essentially change the whole planet, and humans are the most powerful ‘ecosystem engineers’.
Tesla driverless system to use updated radar technology
WASHINGTON: Electric carmaker Tesla announced Sunday it was upgrading its Autopilot software to use more advanced radar technology. In a...
