Volcanoes Triggered Ancient Warming Event
By Ker Than, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 26 April 2007 02:13 pm ET
The same volcanic eruptions that sundered Greenland from Western Europe and created Iceland also triggered intense global warming 55 million years ago, scientists say.
“There has been evidence in the marine record of this period of global warming, and evidence in the geologic record of the eruptions at roughly the same time,” said study team member Robert Duncan, an oceanic scientist at Oregon State University, “but until now there has been no direct link between the two.”
During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), massive amounts of greenhouse gases were injected into the oceans and atmosphere, causing global sea surface temperatures to rise by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
The event changed global rainfall patterns, broiled and acidified the oceans, and killed up to 50 percent of the world’s deep-sea organisms. The warm climate also opened up new migration routes for horses and other mammals into North America and might have even fueled early primate evolution.
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