What do dinosaurs, Tasmanian Tigers and Hoopoe Starlings have in common? The answer is the subject of today's lab, extinction. Extinction occurs when a species cannot survive in its environment to reproduce and cannot move to a new one. Woolly mammoths, for example, were thought to have died as a result of climate change making its habitat and the rest of the planet too warm. Extinction has happened for as long as there has been life on earth. In fact, an estimated 99% of all species that ever existed have gone extinct.
Most of these extinctions happened over time because of environmental changes like our woolly mammoth. But other factors such as competition for resources with other species and inability to avoid predation can also drive a species to extinction. Take these fish, for example. Both species share a habitat, but the green fish is better at evading predators making its survival more likely and eventually driving the orange fish extinct. Over hunting and other human made phenomena such as pollution can also cause the extinction of a species.
Extinctions that occur on a global level are called mass extinctions and these are typically caused by major catastrophic events like impacts from space, significant volcanic activity and other phenomena that cause global climate change. During these events, high rates of extinction exceed the rates of new speciation resulting in a global loss of species.
The best known mass extinction is the Cretaceous-Paleogene or K-Pg extinction, famous for ending the reign of the dinosaurs. This extinction can even be seen in the rock layers or strata of the earth where we see an abrupt loss of species from the fossil record around 66 million years ago, which also coincides with a unique sediment layer containing iridium a metal not often found in the earth's crust. Iridium is, however, present in high amounts in asteroids, giving scientists a clue to the cause of the extinction. The impact at the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico created the 180 kilometer wide Chicxulub Crater and triggered a string of catastrophic events that would alter the earth forever. First, fire storms would have ravaged the North American continent creating a huge cloud of smoke and dust. Debris ejected from the collision would have become trapped in the upper atmosphere causing a blanketing effect, which trapped deadly amounts of infrared radiation in the atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions and widespread geological instability following the impact fueled the smothering of the earth yet further and as the soot, smoke and volcanic ash blocked the sun, many plants were no longer able to photosynthesize and so perished. Without food, the herbivores were the next to die out, followed closely by the predators. The volcanic emissions and resulting smog caused acid rain which acidified the oceans wiping out many aquatic species. Soon, the acidic atmosphere and dense fog blocking the sun's warmth led to a deep freeze with global temperatures dropping below zero for several years. The mass extinction caused by these drastic environmental changes affected every known and three quarters of all species alive at the time went extinct in the evolutionary equivalent of the blink of an eye.
Over time, as the earth's climate slowly returned to normal, the remaining species which included small mammals rebounded and underwent adaptive radiation to fill the many newly vacated In this way, the loss of a great number of species during the mass extinction opened up room for the expansion and speciation of others.
In this lab, you will examine diversity data for several distinct taxa at different time periods around the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction.
Fossils of organisms that were different from anything alive today had been documented as early as the 17th century, but it was not until the early 19th century that scientists began to recognize that the successive layers of fossil bearing rocks were like successive pages in the history of life on earth. Although this recognition gave rise to the birth of the field of paleontology, the idea of complete global extinction of a species had yet to be fully accepted. At that time, it remained viable to argue that our knowledge of the world was limited, therefore scientists considered the possibility that organisms known only from fossils might still live on in some unexplored portion of earth.
When Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, the concept of the extinction of species was becoming more accepted, but the cause of extinctions remained a mystery. Continuous extinction was integral to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, as he viewed it as a logical result of the evolution of species that were more competitive, better predators, or more fit than their ancestors in another way. Therefore, the ancestors had gone extinct to be replaced by their superior descendants. The only illustration Darwin included in his book is of an early phylogenetic tree, which he referred to on multiple occasions to support his argument for extinction being a by-product of evolution.
Every living organism comes to existence, prevails for some period of time, and eventually perishes. The same is true for species as well, hence the ultimate fate of all species is extinction. A species goes extinct when it can no longer survive and reproduce in its environment and cannot move to a new one. It is estimated that over 99% of all species that have ever existed have gone extinct, with most having an average “lifespan” of 1-10 million years. Extinction can be gradual due to slow environmental changes or an inability to compete with an emergent species, or it can be sudden due to catastrophic events, habitat destruction, pollution, or overhunting.
Mass extinctions, or extinction events, are large worldwide decreases in biodiversity, when rates of extinction exceed rates of speciation. Mass extinctions are generally caused by geological or astronomical events, such as volcanic eruptions, changes in atmospheric composition, sea level rise or fall, global cooling and warming, and asteroid impacts.
Five major mass extinction events have been identified and have been used to subdivide geologic time into distinct eras or periods that are nested within eras. When multiple species go extinct very abruptly they disappear from the fossil record, providing a metric for the end of a given subdivision of the geologic time scale and the beginning of a new time period.
The largest mass extinction, the Permian-Triassic extinction, also known as “The Great Dying” or the “Permian-Triassic disaster” took place approximately 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian period, driving over 90% of all species to extinction1. Another well-known mass extinction is the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) or Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) Extinction, which occurred approximately 66 million years ago2. While the cause of the K-Pg extinction has been widely debated, consensus has settled on an asteroid impact on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico as the most important cause of the event. This massive impact led to geologic instability in certain areas, leading to earthquakes, significant amounts of volcanic activity, as well as dramatic sea level rise. In addition, it also triggered massive fires, which in turn filled the air with a thick layer of ash, smoke, and dust, blocking out the sun and leading to a period of global cooling.
The timing of the asteroid impact follows the massive volcanic eruptions that caused the formation of the Deccan Traps, in west-central India. These eruptions happened over an interval of as long as 30,000 years and began before the asteroid impact. They caused the largest volcanic formation on earth that covers an area of over 200,000 square miles. These eruptions would have also caused sustained climate change and hence are seen as either an alternative cause to the asteroid impact or an augmentation of the environmental disruptions that followed the impact.
K-Pg event is most famous for the extinction of dinosaurs; however, dinosaurs were not the only taxa affected – approximately 75% of all species went extinct during this event. Nevertheless, not all taxa were affected equally, and some later benefitted from the opening of previously occupied niches2. Mammals and amphibians were both part of the latter group. While diversity was lost during the extinction, these two taxa lost diversity at a lower rate than many other taxa and both groups underwent an adaptive radiation following the demise of other large tetrapods, such as the archosaurs. Of the Archosaurs, only the lineages that led to birds and crocodiles survived. Hence, non-avian dinosaurs are not observed past the K-Pg boundary in the fossil record, and they are believed to have died out quickly and completely due to their lack of ability to take shelter and their reliance on carnivorous diets. The fossil record for insects shows wide swings at the start of the Paleogene. It is possible this variation is due to the imperfection of the fossil record and some stages were more prone to preserving fossils than others. It is also known, however, that insects experienced similar trends to other taxa, decreasing immediately following the K-Pg extinction and then rebounding. A high point at the Thermal Maximum can also be observed for this taxon. Osteichthyes, or the bony fish, also experience an irregular pattern of diversity. Deep water marine fossils in particular are difficult to find, which could contribute to this irregularity, however it is worth noting that the highest diversity of bony fish is at the Thermal Maximum. Shallow seas are thought to have experienced the worst effects during the extinction event due to the larger impact of sea level rise and reduced photosynthesis compared to other marine habitats. Molluscs experienced a huge decline following the K-Pg extinction and these numbers are not regained by the end of the Paleogene. Echinodermata and Crustacea experience similar levels of decline, however these numbers may also be affected by the lack of fossilizing structures in both of these groups.
Some scientists have suggested that we entered a new geologic era known as Anthropocene, along with the “Sixth Mass Extinction”1-2. This suggestion is based on the global changes as well as the high rate of global extinction as a result of human activity including overhunting, pollution, habitat destruction, invasive species, and climate change. Because the current extinction is caused by human activity, it is unlike the other mass extinctions, which have largely resulted from astronomical and geological processes. The current rate of extinction is up to 100 times higher than it is expected to have been without human influence and it is likely higher, considering species that have not yet been discovered. Considering the rate of Anthropocene extinction is equal to or greater than those associated with the earlier mass extinction events, rapid action is required to reverse the huge losses to vulnerable populations.
