Researchers studying ocean chemistry around the end-Triassic extinction (ETE) event have revealed new details about how oxygen availability in ocean water could have disrupted Earth’s nitrogen cycle and the ecological turnover in certain groups of organisms. Their results provide the first evidence for what is known as photic zone euxinia (PZE) associated with this event in Earth’s history. The scientists report that if the conditions they found had developed widely in the ocean at this period in time, PZE could have been a mechanism for mass extinction.
The study was supported in part by the Exobiology & Evolutionary Biology element of the NASA Astrobiology Program.