{"id":778894,"date":"2026-07-23T00:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/778894\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T00:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:49:10","slug":"volcanoes-started-earths-great-dying-this-unexpected-plant-made-it-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/778894\/","title":{"rendered":"Volcanoes Started Earth’s ‘Great Dying.’ This Unexpected Plant Made It Worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some 200 million years ago, dramatic changes in climate and geology drove the extinction of approximately 80% of species<\/a> on Earth. This hectic time in Earth\u2019s history, the end-Triassic mass extinction event, is generally thought to come from extreme volcanic activity. But scientists think there might have been a smaller, seemingly less threatening contributor: the simple fern.<\/p>\n

To be clear, volcanic activity likely kickstarted the mass extinction event, driving up global\u00a0temperatures and carbon dioxide levels. These changes killed off tree-dominated vegetation, and in their place came large swaths of ferns that formed savannahs in modern Northwest Europe. And these ferns, according to a paper<\/a> published today in Nature Geoscience, further fanned the flames, making a bad situation even worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the ferns dry out, the thick mats act as the ideal fuel to trigger massive wildfires,\u201d Bas van de Schootbrugge, the study\u2019s senior author and an Earth scientist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cFerns responded to and delivered the fuel that fanned the flames, triggering repeated massive wildfires. A truly hellish world.\u201d<\/p>\n

End of an era <\/p>\n

Roughly 201 million years ago, what\u2019s now the Atlantic Ocean quite literally flipped over, blowing up in volcanic eruptions that released tons of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, according to a blog post<\/a> by the U.K.\u2019s Natural History Museum. This led to increases in sea levels and ocean acidity that likely killed off much of marine life from this era.<\/p>\n

On land, things weren\u2019t much better. Severe greenhouse warming effects would have led to an \u201cenhanced fire regime\u201d for several centuries, the team explained in its paper. Importantly, this hypothesis is supported by the high concentrations of charcoal and hydrocarbons found in paleontological records from this time.<\/p>\n

A \u2018dark\u2019 record <\/p>\n

For the latest study, the researchers generated paleo-fire records from sedimentary drill cores, retrieved from different areas in Europe. During their analysis, they found that specific sections of the cores were \u201cprogressively, extremely dark brown,\u201d van de Schootbrugge explained. Across the four different cores, that dark section corresponded to exactly the same time\u2014a so-called \u201cfern spike interval\u201d that saw a steep proliferation of ferns among the flora of the late Triassic era.<\/p>\n

\"CoreCore section from the Prees-2 core drilled in the United Kingdom in 2021. Credit: Teuntje Hollaar\/Utrecht University <\/p>\n

\u201cThe darkening overlaps exactly with the fern spike, the main extinction interval, and the elevated abundance of charcoal and PAHs [organic compounds associated with burning biomass],\u201d van de Schootbrugge said.<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, it\u2019s not uncommon for the color of organic microfossils to develop dark hues as they get buried from pressure and temperature changes, according to the statement. However, the consistency across four cores, which \u201cexperienced very different geological histories,\u201d suggested to the team that there was something else going on, said van de Schootbrugge.<\/p>\n

Fueling the flames <\/p>\n

The team sought to isolate factors that could be contributing to the fossils\u2019 unusually dark hues. For instance, the researchers generated 15,000 measurements from pollen and spores captured in the core record, for before, during, and after the extinction events. This analysis indicated that the darkened sections didn\u2019t vary significantly according to the type of plant involved\u2014a \u201cstrong indication that it was the result of an outside force,\u201d van de Schootbrugge explained.<\/p>\n

\"FossilExamples of fossil fern spores from before and after the end-Triassic mass extinction interval (left) and fossil fern spores from the \u2018fern spike interval\u2019 that are darkened due to charring during wildfires. Credit: Bas van de Schootbrugge\/Utrecht University <\/p>\n

The fern spike may have not been a coincidence, as the fairly common plant is known to \u201cadapt to some of the most extreme environments,\u201d he added. Even if their leaves are wiped out by the flames, their underground root systems nonchalantly bounce back. Dry ferns happen to be the perfect fuel for massive wildfires, according to van de Schootbrugge. And the scary thing? This fern spike is estimated to have lasted anywhere between 40,000 years and 300,000 years.<\/p>\n

Again, it\u2019s unlikely that ferns were the sole cause of the long, fiery conditions fueling the end-Triassic mass extinction event. But it\u2019s a reminder that Earth\u2019s systems are closely interconnected; no part is separate from the other, and some unexpected collaborations can really make things go sideways\u2014a lesson that\u2019s rather relevant for us today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some 200 million years ago, dramatic changes in climate and geology drove the extinction of approximately 80% of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[24640,16086,79],"class_list":["post-778894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-paleobiology","tag-paleontology","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}