Over 200 million years ago, a series of volcanic eruptions emitted an enormous amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The eruptions prompted a period of global warming and ocean acidification that soon eliminated two-thirds of the planet's plant and animal species.
Among these species, scientists say that the thousands of terrestrial and aquatic snails and slugs within the gastropod taxon were especially affected, though the extent of this effect remains unknown.
Now, a new paper published in PLOS ONE has started to uncover the extent of this effect. The study suggests that over half of all gastropod genera were wiped out as a result of the 200-million-year-old eruptions. It also proposes several explanations as to why one particular group of snails survived an extinction that decimated many of its closest counterparts.
The Triassic-Jurassic extinction was one of the biggest extinction events to occur on our planet, yet we don't ...
