Using the fossil record to accurately estimate the timing and pace of past mass extinctions is no easy task, and a new study highlights how fossil evidence can produce a misleading picture if not interpreted with care.
Florida Museum of Natural History
researchers used a series of 130-foot cores drilled from the Po Plain in
northeastern Italy to test a thought experiment: Imagine catastrophe strikes
the Adriatic Sea, swiftly wiping out modern marine life. Could this
hypothetical mass extinction be reconstructed correctly from mollusks –
hard-shelled animals such as oysters and mussels – preserved in these cores?
When they examined the cores, the
results were “somewhat unnerving”, said Michal Kowalewski, Thompson
Chair of Invertebrate Paleontology and the study’s principal investigator.
Taken at face value, the cores
presented a dramatically distorted record of both the timing and tempo of
extinction, potentially calling into question some of the methods
paleontologists commonly use to interpret past mass extinctions.
“[…] the nature of the geological
record is complicated, so it is not trivial to decipher it correctly.” Kowalewski
said. Many parameters, like by species’ ecological preferences, sea level and
the makeup of sedimentary basins, could skew patterns of mass extinction. (1)
Always in motion is the past.
Making the future hard to grasp.
A future always in turmoil.
Making the past difficult to see.
At the end, we always experience the
“now”.
A “now” locked in the whirlwinds of
existence.
What a strange cosmos.
Always moving.
A blur in the background of
nothingness.
Almost as if it doesn’t want to be seen…
