Methane-spewing microbe blamed in Earth's worst mass extinction (Permo-Triassic)

[jpak]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-science-extinction-idUSBREA2U1KO20140331

Sometimes bad things come in small packages.

A microbe that spewed humongous amounts of methane into Earth's atmosphere triggered a global catastrophe 252 million years ago that wiped out upwards of 90 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land vertebrates.

<snip>

It suddenly became a major producer of methane through the consumption of accumulated organic carbon in ocean sediments.

The microbe would have been unable to proliferate so wildly without proper mineral nutrients. The researchers found that cataclysmic volcanic eruptions that occurred at that time in Siberia drove up ocean concentrations of nickel, a metallic element that just happens to facilitate this microbe's growth.

<more>