Oceanography Analysis: The Great Dying

The End Permian

Oceanography 101

There are many theories about what caused the cataclysmic events that led to what is called The Great Dying. This event was so devastating that nearly all life on earth disappeared, and what life remained, clung to life on the edge. There had been periods where species had disappeared, but this one stands alone in that “51% of all marine families, 82% of all genera, an estimated 93-97% of all species” (End-Permian mass extinction (the Great Dying)).
The most widely accepted and circulated theory is that the chain of events was caused by the impact of a large asteroid that resulted in elevated volcanic activity, a nuclear winter, and a great die off.

But as science and technology have advanced,…show more content…
The result was not just the super heated earth, it also resulted in oxygen depletion, the acid rain falling would have also been toxic with the ash and other debris in the upper atmosphere falling with it, this would have created an event of ocean acidification, killing many of the organisms that could survive the low oxygen levels in a normally pH balanced body of water. Many of the organisms and animals that did survive were small, and most could thrive if not survive in a low oxygen, acidic environment. “The collapse of marine ecosystems at the end of the Lopingian was most likely triggered by a sudden and widespread flooding over all relict shelves, following maximum emergence of epicontinental seas around Pangea” (Yin, Zhang, Shang). Many marine animals that survived could produce their own food, or lived off of the organisms mentioned above. But these animals never fully recovered, even after thousands of years they never reached the numbers that they once had. It took over 50 million years for some ecosystems to fully recover from the effects of this event…show more content…
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Works Cited

Benton, Michael . "Wipeout." New Scientist 178: 38. Web. 24 May 2014.
Dickey, Gwyneth. "Stanford scientists link ocean acidification to prehistoric mass extinction." The Stanford Report 27 Apr. 2010: n. pag. Print.
"End-Permian mass extinction (the Great Dying)." Natural History Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 May 2014. <http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/mass-extinctions/end-permian-mass-extinction/index.html>.
Hallam, A., and Wignall, P.B. Mass Extinctions and Their Aftermath. Athens: Oxford, 1997. Print.
Kershaw, S.; Crasquin, S.; Li, Y.; Collin, P.-Y.; Forel, M.-B. Ocean Acidification and the End-Permian Mass Extinction: To What Extent does Evidence Support Hypothesis? Geosciences 2012, 2, 221-234.
Payne, Jonathan. "Stanford scientists link ocean acidification to prehistoric mass extinction." The Stanford Report 27 Apr. 2010: n. pag. Print.
Yugan, Jin, Zhang Jing, and Shang Qinghua. "Two phases of the end-Permian mass extinction." (1994): 813-822. Web. 24 May