The eruption filled the atmosphere with aerosols — fine particles suspended in greenhouse gases that led to warming and, eventually, the extinction of much of marine life, especially shelled invertebrates on the ocean floor.
Climate change is pushing it ever closer to extinction as warming temperatures rapidly melt the sea ice it needs to survive.
This year's studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that centuries of warming, rising seas and species extinctions would probably result unless there were sharp curbs in climate-warming emissions within a few decades.
He said concern had grown over the past year thanks to papers signalling that past extinctions had involved warming seas, acidification and low oxygen levels.
But, for those of a nervous disposition, the tying of an ancient greenhouse warming to an ancient mass extinction might suggest lessons for the future.
Pentasepalae are Mediterranean orophytes that face a high risk of extinction with climate warming and/or grow in Important Plant Areas (IPAs; IPA online database: http://www.plantlifeipa.org/reports.asp), regions that display exceptionally rich floras of biogeographic interest (Rojas-Andrés et al., 2015).
The dating also establishes that the extinction on land, apparently driven by extreme drying and warming, happened simultaneously with the marine extinction.
My four-year-old is very worried about global warming, animal extinction and our threatened world.
A renowned entomologist and Harvard professor emeritus, Wilson has warned for years, in books like "The Future of Life" (2002), of global warming, mass extinction and other troubles of humanity's own making.
It explains every one of these phenomena: Global warming, marine extinction, changes in living patterns and even in the economies of the world.
