[meteorite-list] Catastrophic Impacts Made Life Flourish

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:44:02 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <200712192144.NAA11983_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22298683/

Catastrophic impacts made life flourish
Meteorites linked to an explosion in biodiversity millions of years ago
By Dave Mosher
MSNBC
December 17, 2007

Space rocks are blamed for a lot of rough times on Earth, from the
die-off of most marine animals some 250 million years ago to the
disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years in the past.

A new theory, however, suggests that catastrophic meteorite impacts
are linked to an explosion in biodiversity about 470 million years ago,
during the Ordovician Period. Within a few million years, the number of
trilobite species and scores of other creatures on Earth jumped at least
three to four times.

Birger Schmitz, a geologist at the University of Lund in Sweden who
worked for more than 10 years to help gather evidence backing up the
claim, is the first to admit that his group's findings are hard to swallow.

"It seems completely at odds with anyone's expectations," Schmitz said,
"but you have to remember, for example, that it was at first difficult
for many scientists to accept asteroid explanations for the
disappearance of the dinosaurs".

Schmitz and his colleagues detail their findings in the Dec. 16 advance
issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.

Smackdown

Just before the jolt to Ordovician life, Schmitz said two massive bodies
in the Asteroid Belt slammed into one another, littering the solar
system with rocks the size of Manhattan island and ranging down to
microscopic bits of dust.

"Even today, more than 20 percent of the meteorites we see came from
this breakup event," Schmitz said. That makes the L-chondrite
meteorites, as they're known, the most common kind to rain down on Earth.

Such extraterrestrial rocks contain a unique form of radioactive
chromium, so Schmitz and his team were able to figure out precisely
when, how much and how often the cosmic debris slammed into Earth.

"We saw a sudden jump in meteorite material around the time of increased
biodiversity," Schmitz said - greater than 100 times more material, in fact.
"That's a major event, and an incredible coincidence that I don't think we
should ignore," he told LiveScience.com.

Schmitz cautioned that while the two events line up in an uncanny way,
there is still a lot of work left to do to connect the increased
meteorite impacts to inflating biodiversity.

"It took us about 15 years to accumulate data for this finding, and it's
something that isn't just a computer model or simulation. It's real,
tactile evidence," he said of the work, which included slowly
acid-dissolving almost a ton of rock collected from around the world to
sift out bits of chromium.

The scientists compared their meteorite record to layers of fossilized
plants and animals, determining that the cosmic smashup
happened shortly before the biodiversity boost.

"I expect that it will take us another 15 years of playing in the dirt
to get there, to find Ordovician impact craters and beds associated with
this breakup," he said.

Pushing their luck

Schmitz isn't certain exactly how pummeling the planet with rocks could
cause life to thrive, but he thinks it has something to do with creating
new nooks and crannies for life to adapt to in its new environment.

"Before the breakup you had primitive animals adapted to rough
conditions, so you could say they were prepared for the storm," Schmitz
said.

Schmitz also explained that evolution is very much "give-and-take," as
radiating into new species requires a figurative kick in the shins.

"If you push an ecosystem too hard, you'll destroy it," he said. "But
for the organisms living on Earth at the time, [the environment] pushed
them to adapt and fill new niches. It's like at the university: I tell
my students all the time that if we don't push you, you don't evolve."

Whether or not the cosmic smashup ultimately caused life on Earth to
thrive 470 million years ago, the connection between events in space and
life on Earth is intriguing, Schmitz said.

"There's much more to be learned how the history of Earth and its life
is related to the universe," he said. "We're only in the beginning of
exploring that connection."
Received on Wed 19 Dec 2007 04:44:02 PM PST