Every 36 million years there is an outbreak of life on Earth: scientists discovered the reason

Approximately every 36 million years there is a so-called outbreak of life on Earth, whereby marine life booms with the appearance of new species. It turns out that the movement of tectonic plates, leading to rising sea levels, plays a crucial role in its formation.

This was discovered by a new study that was published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). The researchers note that these cycles, which are at least 250 million years old, could pose a serious challenge to conventional wisdom about the long-term evolution of species.

A team, led by geologist Slah Boulila of Sorbonne University in France, found that it disrupts several ecosystems, forcing many species to struggle and new species to flourish to fill new ecological niches.

Study co-author Dietmar Müller, a professor from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Sydney, Australia, explained that the 36-million-year cycle marks a change between faster and slower seafloor spreading. This, he said, "leads to cyclical changes in depth in ocean basins and tectonic movement of water deep into the Earth."

The result is fluctuations in the flooding and drying of continents, "with periods of large shallow seas that promote biodiversity."

When sea level rises and falls, leading to the expansion and contraction of different habitats on continental shelves and shallow seas, some organisms are given the way to thrive while others are killed off. This leads to the emergence of new life forms.

The researchers' findings relied on GPlates tectonic software developed by the EarthByte Group at the University of Sydney. It helped them to discover remarkably consistent cycles by analyzing sea level fluctuations, Earth's inner workings and marine fossils.

"The cycles last 36 million years because of regular patterns of how tectonic plates are recycled into the convective mantle, the moving part of the Earth's interior," Muller explained.

He added that this new theory also challenges previous ideas about the long-term evolution of species.

There are other triggers in Earth's history that can affect biodiversity. For example, the team also found evidence of a biodiversity cycle lasting 62 million years.

According to the researchers, this could be due to changes in carbon dioxide levels, but this issue requires further study.

Earlier OBOZREVATEL also told about the fact that scientists have discovered the "killer" that caused two mass extinctions on Earth.

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