Skip to main content

About 250M years ago, 90% of species on Earth died during the Permian extinction.

Tragic? Perhaps. But it also created a lot of vacant niches to fill.

And not long after, the very first mammals, our ancestors, appeared.

#Life on Earth is resilient & will continue to be, whether we're part of it or not. #history #science

#science #history #life
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Barry Goldman
Barry Goldman
• •

was just thinking about how the last 100,000 years of climate bouncing helped make us human. i'm sure it was a struggle, but creative.

what will the next 100,000 years of climate bouncing create?

it'll be rough but we are rugged.

in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

CaveDave
CaveDave
• •
I'd personally like us to be a part of it though
This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Gustavo Ogasawara
Gustavo Ogasawara
• •
I'm not sure about that. This #time, it is possible that we are about to face the possibility of a permanent #collapse. The maximum speed of evolution is much lower than the speed of climate change that is taking place.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

haley
haley
• •
Gonna be some really fascinating plastic eating organisms in a couple hundred or thousand years (I'm not educated enough in biology to understand how long that might feasibly take). Kind of a bummer there might be like, five people left to notice them, if that.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

HistoPol (#HP)
HistoPol (#HP)
• •

Yes, I had been thinking about that.

"New research shows the "Great Dying" was caused by global warming that left ocean animals unable to breathe...As temperatures rose and the metabolism of marine animals sped up, the warmer waters could not hold enough oxygen for them to survive. "*

/s: Rhat, and that the only known species that was as stupid as human beings to destroy its habitat was the blue algae.

What does this say about human intelligence? /s

*
https://earth.stanford.edu/news/what-caused-earths-biggest-mass-extinction


What caused Earth's biggest mass extinction?

Scientists have debated until now what made Earth's oceans so inhospitable to life that some 96 percent of marine species died off at the end of the Permian period.
Hannah Hickey, University of Washington (Stanford Earth)
This entry was edited (8 months ago)
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

cynthia rose
cynthia rose
• •
What’s tragic is the idea that humans can go ahead and induce a mass extinction event, and it’s ok bc the Earth’s long term resilience means life will only be extinct for a few hundred million years. Eesh.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

SpaceLifeForm
SpaceLifeForm
• •

Life will always reboot itself via deep ocean vents.

As long as the magnetic field exists.

See Mars for when the magnetic field stops.

in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

El of LA
El of LA
• •
I wish I was convinced of this. The extinct event is too extreme - animals, plants, ocean - and Earth will be left too hot to possibly even recover from it. Humans deserve to die, but the other life did not. I am having trouble getting my mind around the scope of our dismal failure as a species. I always have..my physicist Dad taught environmental sci. in 70's. I tried a lifetime to make change happen. That was also a dismal failure.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

that_marouk_ish
that_marouk_ish
• •
"vacant niche" sounds like a good business opportunity, for those that can make it to post-capitalism
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

init6
init6
• •
it'll be interesting since we mixed so many ecosystems together. Like mad scientists meddling evolution in strange ways.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

O'Shaq Hennessy
O'Shaq Hennessy
• •
I struggle getting minimizers to understand this one the most. Climate change won't destroy the Earth, that's nearly impossible. But climate change doesn't need to destroy the Earth in order to create a bunch of problems for us. Climate change only needs to destroy the Earth's ability to sustain our entire species. That's very easy to do and is happening at an alarming rate. At this point, I believe it's inevitable; best case, half of humanity survives.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Nazo
Nazo
• •
Yeah, even if we completely wreck things and kill ourselves off something will live. It may just be cockroaches and radioactive weeds, but something.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

@batyalee 🌿
@batyalee 🌿
• •
Zooming out to 100,000 years and viewing the planet as just one sphere is unhelpful, since most people can’t see past their own house and won’t plan past a few weeks into the future. I think it’s unspeakably tragic that humanity has been such a terrible scourge for every part of the ecosphere and all life contained within it. I really hope no one is successful in transplanting humans to any other planet, for obvious reasons.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Angela Scholder
Angela Scholder
• •
Well, the way we are busy making it possible to have summer all year on the Poles, humans definitely will not be part of it in the future of Earth.....
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Jay Peach
Jay Peach
• •
and we probably won’t be a part of it, the way things are going.
in reply to Sheril Kirshenbaum

Erik Ableson
Erik Ableson
• •
@lisamelton I always try to use this to give the correct perspective to folks having a hard time grasping the concept and the impacts: https://mastodon.infrageeks.social/@erik/110507145243094030
@Lisa Melton

Lo, thar be cookies on this site to keep track of your login. By clicking 'okay', you are CONSENTING to this.

⇧