The history of life on earth has been marked by periodic episodes of extinction, where the loss of species outpaces the formation of new species. Particularly sharp declines in species diversity are called mass extinctions. Five mass extinctions have occurred, the first of them near the end of the Ordovician period about 438 million years ago. At that time, most of the existing families of trilobites, a very common type of marine arthropod, became extinct. Another mass extinction occurred about 360 million years ago at the end of the Devonian period. The third and most drastic mass extinction in the history of life on earth happened during the last 10 million years of the Permian period, marking the end of the Paleozoic era.
It is estimated that 96% of all species of marine animals that were living at that time became extinct! All of the trilobites disappeared forever. Brachiopods, marine animals resembling mollusks but with a different filter-feeding system, were extremely diverse and widespread during the Permian; only a few species survived. Bryozoans, marine filter-feeders that formed coral-like colonies in oceans throughout the world in the Permian, became rare afterward. Mass extinctions left vacant many ecological opportunities, and for this reason they were followed by rapid evolution among the relatively few plants, animals, and other organisms that survived the extinction. Little is known about the causes of major extinctions.
In the case of the Permian mass extinction, some scientists argue that the extinction was brought on by a gradual accumulation of carbon dioxide in ocean waters, the result of large-scale volcanism due to the collision of the earth’s landmasses during formation of the single large “super-continent” of Pangaea. Such an increase in carbon dioxide would have severely disrupted the ability of animals to carry out metabolism and form their shells. The most famous and well-studied extinction, though not as drastic, occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period (65 million years ago), at which time the dinosaurs and a variety of other organisms went extinct.
Recent findings have supported the hypothesis that this fifth mass extinction event was triggered when a large asteroid slammed into the earth, perhaps causing global forest fires and obscuring the sun for months by throwing particles into the air. We are living during a new sixth mass extinction event. The number of species in the world is greater today than it has ever been. Unfortunately, that number is decreasing at an alarming rate due to human activity. Some estimate that as many as one-fourth of all species will become extinct in the near future, a rate of extinction not seen on earth since the Cretaceous mass extinction.
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