古代地球物种大灭绝的准确时间确立

It's well known that Earth's most severe mass extinction¹ occurred about 250 million years ago. What's not well known is the specific time when the extinctions occurred. A team of researchers from North America and China have published a paper in Science which explicitly² provides the date and rate of extinction. "This is the first paper to provide rates of such massive extinction," says Dr. Charles Henderson, professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Calgary and co-author of the paper: Calibrating³ the end-Permian mass extinction. "Our information narrows down（缩小，限制） the possibilities of what triggered the massive extinction and any potential kill mechanism⁴ must coincide with this time."

About 95 percent of marine⁵ life and 70 percent of terrestrial（陆地的） life became extinct during what is known as the end-Permian, a time when continents were all one land mass called Pangea. The environment ranged from desert to lush forest. Four-limbed vertebrates were becoming diverse and among them were primitive⁶ amphibians⁷（两栖动物） , reptiles⁸（爬行动物） and a group that would, one day, include mammals.

Through the analysis of various types of dating techniques on well-preserved sedimentary（沉淀的） sections from South China to Tibet, researchers determined⁹ that the mass extinction peaked about 252.28 million years ago and lasted less than 200,000 years, with most of the extinction lasting¹⁰ about 20,000 years.

"These dates are important as it will allow us to understand the physical and biological changes that took place," says Henderson. "We do not discuss modern climate change, but obviously global warming is a biodiversity concern today. The geologic¹¹ record tells us that 'change' happens all the time, and from this great extinction life did recover." There is ongoing¹² debate over whether the death of both marine and terrestrial life coincided, as well as over kill mechanisms¹³, which may include rapid global warming, hypercapnia（血碳酸过多症） (a condition where there is too much CO2 in the blood stream), continental¹⁴ aridity¹⁵（干旱，乏味） and massive wildfires. The conclusion of this study says extinctions of most marine and terrestrial life took place at the same time. And the trigger, as suggested by these researchers and others, was the massive release of CO2 from volcanic¹⁶ flows known as the Siberian traps, now found in northern Russia.

Henderson's conodont（牙形石） research was integrated with other data to establish the study's findings. Conodonts are extinct, soft-bodied eel-like creatures with numerous tiny teeth that provide critical information on hydrocarbon¹⁷（碳氢化合物） deposits to global extinctions.