Extreme climate change suffocated nearly all ocean life 250 million years ago

The Great Dying was as nasty as it sounds. 

Some 250 million years ago, around 95 percent of ocean species vanished during the planet’s largest-known extinction event, also called the Great Permian Extinction. 

The culprit is suspected to be extreme climate change, as epic volcanism filled the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, which gradually heated both the air and the seas. 

Ultimately, the vastly warmer ocean temperatures, which likely climbed by 20 degrees Fahrenheit or more near the surface, left vast swaths of the ocean with little oxygen. New research, published Thursday in the journal Science, illustrates that this doomed the critters swimming therein.  Read more…

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