Volcanic eruptions caused mass extinction to begin the age of dinosaurs
The death of the dinosaurs was not the only mass extinction to occur during Earth’s long history, but it is actually one of five that occurred during the past 540 million years. One of these extinctions occurred at the end of the Triassic period more than 200 million years ago. This killed 76 percent of all marine and terrestrial species, thus allowing the dinosaurs to dominate the planet during the Jurassic period. The cause of this massive wave of death was not fully understood by the scientific community, which struggled to find the cause.
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University believe a series of massive volcanic eruptions strong enough to alter both Earth’s marine and terrestrial climates caused the extinction.
The volcanic eruptions occurred in an area referred to as the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province during the period when the supercontinent Pangaea still existed. By dating the igneous and sedimentary rocks in both Morocco and the Eastern U.S., researchers determined when and for how long the eruptions occurred. Linking these eruptions to the extinction was a difficult task because of the large geological timescale researchers had to analyze. An error in the dating process could have skewed the date of the event by a million years, leading to false predictions
To reduce the risk of error, scientists employed an interdisciplinary approach by combing geochronology and astrochronology techniques to date the ancient volcanic sediments. The techniques allowed the researchers to date the volcanic sediments to within approximately 30,000 years around the event, which is a precise measurement when considering geological timescales.
These results are the strongest link between the Triassic extinction and the CAMP eruptions.
Getting Sick is Not Gender Equal
The common cold and flu are illnesses that all men and women share and dread, but not all diseases affect both genders in the same way. Giovannella Baggio and her research team at Padua University Hospital in Italy published an article explaining how the effects of diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and osteoporosis differ between the sexes.
Through her study, Baggio claims how clinical tests on diseases can be skewed based on the gender that is more likely to contract the disease. For example, men are more likely to get colon cancer. She said this bias is a form of medical inequality because these diseases can also affect the other gender, though less often.
One of Baggio’s studies focused on osteoporosis, a type of bone disease that generally affects women, but which can occasionally be found in men as well. The study revealed that men with osteoporosis have a higher mortality rate than women because the disease is often overlooked in men.
Baggio said conducting more clinical tests of gender-skewed diseases must be conducted in order to determine their full effects on both genders.
