Mass Extinction In Evolution

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Mass Extinction.

Source: https://worldatlas.com

Mass extinction has impacted our earth's evolution tremendously. From as far back as 500 million years ago during the Cambrian period, to as close to us now 65 million years ago during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, and all 3 events in between have affected the animals and plants surrounding our planet gigantically. Mass extinction is when there is a rapid decrease of animals and plant species on earth due to the earth's natural disasters, some of the earth’s disasters can even lead to the evolution of a new era. For example: the Cretaceous Paleogene extinction. The Cretaceous Paleogene had a combination of volcanic activity, asteroid impact, and climate change to take 76% of dinosaur
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76% of species were lost during this era. Scientists are still questioning whether the late Devonian extinction is a single event or if it lasted for thousands of years. Trilobites which had nearly survived the Ordovician Silurian event were nearly killed during this era. What caused trilobites to nearly go extinct is: Because of all the giant plants covering the planet their roots gave nutrients to the ocean. Lands of water had algal blooms then carried on to kill animals. The volcanic ash killed spiders and scorpions on earth for this time. Another animal related to amphibian called elpistostegalians became extinct in a fast amount of time. Later on, vertebrates only appeared around 10 million years later, such as we evolved from called the ichthyostegalians. Without ichthyostegalians evolving to eventually becoming us, we would not be alive without out this …show more content…
We are living in currently in the Holocene era. As we observe the planet around us many of us noticed plants and animals are endangered at an amazingly fast rate. The result of the mass extinction is fortunately not going to be Metroid or volcanic activity. Unfortunately, the cause is most likely to be climate change due to all the humans activities currently happening, for example, all the fossil fuels we are burning like coal, oil, and gas. All these extra fumes build up in the air building up greenhouse gases, therefore the earth's surface temperature begins to rise. Causes like burning fossil fuels have triggered climate change, soon it is obvious we will have our sixth mass