Why did the Paleozoic end with the largest mass extinction?

Answer 1

the plants started to change and the herbavores started to die so the carnivivors had to kill each other and went almost extinct and then a meteorite shower finished them off.

Answer 2

At the time of the Permian mass extinction, the Siberian Traps were forming. The Siberian Traps were a huge, long term volcanic eruption lasting about one million years, and poured out enough lava to cover 7 million square kilometers nearly half a kilometer deep.

This eruption is presumed to have released enough carbon dioxide gas to raise Earth's temperature by 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit). This would have been enough to evaporate many liquid methane deposits under the ocean floor. Methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and so even in smaller amounts it would have been able to raise the global temperature an additional 5 degrees Celsius.

This means that the new average temperature would be 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than before. The Earth would have suffered a desert-like climate.

This heating could have disrupted the thermohaline circulation in the oceans, which would have reduced the amount of oxygen being dissolved in the oceans. Not only would this lack of oxygen kill many sea animals, but it dramatically increased the populations of certain kinds of anaerobic bacteria (anaerobic bacteria are those that do not need, and in fact are usually killed by oxygen). These bacteria would have produced so much hydrogen sulfide gas that many plants and animals would have been poisoned. Then this gas would have damaged the ozone layer, and that would have allowed very damaging amounts of UV light to enter, killing even more species.

However, this theory appears to have some weaknesses, so scientists are not yet certain of what caused this tremendous mass extinction.

Answer 3

Extinction occurs when, as a result of some environmental change or catastrophe, a species is no longer able to survive in its environment. In a mass extinction, a significant percentage of species worldwide go extinct at the same time, as the result of a global catastrophe or change in the environment.

Most often these global catastrophes manifest as a drastic change in weather patterns, which cause many or most existing species to go extinct. An example is the Permian-Triassic extinction event, in which about 90% of species are estimated to have died out. The cause is believed to have been the Siberian Traps, a large area of constant volcanic eruptions in what is now Russia that released enough greenhouse gases to raise Earth's global temperature and release stored methane in the ocean floor, further raising Earth's temperature. The total temperature change was only about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, or 5.5 degrees Celsius, but it was enough to cause the worst known mass extinction in Earth's history. As continents moved, they also caused changes in climate at times, resulting in more minor mass extinctions, and a very large asteroid impact caused at least one major mass extinction event.

Answer 4

Who cares it really does not matter what event happened. read the book

Answer 5

describe the evidence suggesting that impact caue the mass extinction that klled off the dinosours

Answer 6

Frequent volcanic eruptions