Scientists have speculated for years that the world is coming up on its sixth mass extinction, when a majority of the Earth’s creatures become extinct. But a couple of Virginia Tech researchers are studying what happened in the first extinction in hopes of avoiding another.
A new study led by Scott Evans, a postdoctoral researcher, and co-author Shuhai Xiao, a paleobiologist, showed that 80% of animals and organisms that died off 550 million years ago did so because of a drop in the amount of oxygen in waterways.
Some animals need more oxygen to survive, and the animals hit hardest were those that required more and were less mobile — they couldn’t get to areas with greater oxygen supplies. Larger animals that could take deeper breaths were more likely to live.
