Texas, Arlington – It is likely that the latest study will give more establishment as to how carbon became such a central construction material for some ocean life 252 million-years-ago. Scientists say that more than 90 percent of terrestrial and marine species became extinct. As the Permian Period of the Paleozoic Era ended which triggered the beginning of Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era.
Some of the proposals that are in suggestion for this extinction event include extensive volcanic activity, global heating and to the very extreme, one or more extraterrestrial impacts. Researchers focus was more one part of the newest Permian ancient rocks in Vietnam which is south of the Chinese border.
Spaced samples were put together and a study done on them from a distance of about a four-meter interval in the boundary strata. A professor of earth and environmental sciences, Merlynd Nestell who also happens to be a co – author of the study has said that in Northern and the Southern Hemispheres, wide-ranging volcanic activity was experienced at the of Permian-Triassic transition.
There was also synchronous volcanic activity according to Nestell, what is now Australia and southern China and which would have burned Permian vegetation. The carbon accumulation from ash was used by some marine microorganisms to construct their shells, something that they had never done before.
Another co – author of the study Galina P. Nestell, who is also an adjunct research professor of earth and environmental sciences said that black layers revealed was as a result of the boundary interval foraminifers’ specimens that were realized in slices of rock that were milled thin and which were also studied from other places.
This phenomenon has not been reported before even though reports indicate that there have been studies before about the sequences of rocks that cross this important Permian-Triassic boundary. The studies have been carried before in China, Turkey, Hungary and Iran among other areas of the world.
From this discovery, elemental carbon has since been documented as a major construction component of the tiny shells of single-celled agglutinated foraminifers.
