Australia’s deadly eruptions the reason for the first mass extinction

[knocker]

 

A Curtin University researcher has shown that ancient volcanic eruptions in Australia 510 million years ago significantly affected the climate, causing the first known mass extinction in the history of complex life.

 

http://news.curtin.edu.au/media-releases/australias-deadly-eruptions-reason-first-mass-extinction/

[Steve C]

Maybe there were more mass extinctions earlier? I appreciate the study is about complex life. At microbial level it would be hard to tell events, but we assume that life existed for 3 or so 1,000 million years before it became complex. Maybe the simple life form had a shorter natural lifespan (before it evolved) but was wiped out before it could progress?

[Crepuscular Ray]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/extinction_events

 

If you click on each, it gives you a summary of the timings of the "big five" extinction events. There may well have been earlier ones, but any evidence has long since been destroyed.

 

The Australian evidence cited by Knocker certainly points at there being one before the first of the big five.