Siberian volcanism could have caused Earth’s largest extinction

A new study has shed light on how the eruption of a large swath of volcanic rock in Russia called the Siberian Traps could have triggered the most severe mass extinction on earth around 250 million years ago.

The mass extinction at the end of the Permian geologic period was so severe that it remains the most traumatic known species die-off in Earth’s history.

It saw the sudden loss of more than 90 percent of marine species and more than 70 percent of terrestrial species.

The fossil record suggests that ecological diversity did not fully recover until several million years after the main pulse of the extinction. This suggests that environmental conditions remained inhospitable for an extended period of time.

Although the cause of this event is a mystery, it has been speculated that the Siberian Traps might have contributed to drastic deterioration in the global environment of the period.

Gases released as a result of Siberian magmatism could have caused environmental damage.

A team of researchers led by Benjamin Black of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed experiments to examine these possibilities.

The geology of the Siberian Traps is comprised of flood basalts, which form when giant lava eruptions coat large swaths of land or ocean floor with basaltic lava. This lava hardens into rock formations.

The team investigated concentrations of sulfur, chlorine and fluorine (another halogen) that were dissolved in tiny samples of ancient magma found within basalt samples from the Siberian Traps. These small frozen droplets, which preserve a record of volcanic gases from the time of the eruption 250 million years ago, are called melt inclusions.

Sulfur, chlorine, and fluorine gasses could have been released into the atmosphere from eruptions spewing out of large fissures, which is common in basalt flood formation.

Plumes escaping from these cracks could have reached the stratosphere. If sulfur, chlorine, and fluorine made it to the upper atmosphere, these gasses could have cause a wide array of adverse climate events, including temperature change and acid rain.

Based on their findings, the team estimated that between 6,300 and 7,800 gigatonnes of sulfur, between 3,400 and 8,700 gigatonnes of chlorine, and between 7,100 and 13,700 gigatonnes of fluorine were released from magma in the Siberian Traps during the end of the Permian period.

They say more research on atmospheric chemistry and climate modelling is urgently needed to determine whether these gasses could have been responsible for the mass extinction.

Their work has been published January 9 in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.