{"id":3544,"date":"2014-11-22T02:12:34","date_gmt":"2014-11-22T07:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=3544"},"modified":"2014-11-22T02:12:34","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T07:12:34","slug":"worlds-first-mass-extinction-was-many-events-not-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/worlds-first-mass-extinction-was-many-events-not-one\/","title":{"rendered":"World\u2019s first mass extinction was many events, not one<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3546\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Anticosti-fossils.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3546\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3546\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Anticosti-fossils.png\" alt=\"Fossils like these from Quebec\u2019s Anticosti Island have shed light on the world\u2019s first mass extinction, showing it was caused not by a single large glaciation but by many over a long period of time. (Photo credit: Andr\u00e9 Desrochers)\" width=\"400\" height=\"196\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Anticosti-fossils.png 400w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Anticosti-fossils-300x147.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3546\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fossils like these from Quebec\u2019s Anticosti Island have shed light on the world\u2019s first mass extinction, showing it was caused not by a single large glaciation but by many over a long period of time. (Photo credit: Andr\u00e9 Desrochers)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The world\u2019s first mass extinction 444 million years ago was likely caused by a series of freeze-ups, and not a single massive ice age as previously thought. The extinction, which marks the boundary between the Ordovician and Silurian ages, wiped out 85 per cent of life in the oceans.<\/p>\n<p>In the new paper, fossil records from Quebec\u2019s Anticosti Island &#8211; which at the time would have been near the equator &#8211; were used to reconstruct a more detailed picture of rising and falling sea levels than has previously been possible. By correlating these results with records from Morocco &#8211; at the time, near the South Pole &#8211; the team demonstrated that several glaciations and de-glaciations happened at the time of the extinction event, rather than just one.<\/p>\n<p>The results could help climate modellers predict the impacts of future changes to the earth\u2019s biogechemical systems.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"www.nature.com\/ncomms\/2014\/140901\/ncomms5485\/full\/ncomms5485.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Original research paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in <em>Nature Communications\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_453723367\"><span class=\"aQJ\"><strong>September 1, 2014<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4>Andr\u00e9 Desrochers, University of Ottawa, Ontario<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The world\u2019s first mass extinction 444 million years ago was likely caused by a series of freeze-ups, and not a single massive ice age as previously thought. The extinction, which marks the boundary between the Ordovician and Silurian ages, wiped out 85 per cent of life in the oceans. In the new paper, fossil records [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[170,31,265,50],"class_list":["post-3544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-biodiversity","tag-climate-change","tag-fossil","tag-ontario"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Anticosti-fossils.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-Va","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3548,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3544\/revisions\/3548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}