New theory of mass extinction – animals were responsible and not meteorite strike or volcanos

A recent study has indicated that there is a misconception about how the mass extinction of species occurred millions of years ago. It had been generally accepted that the extinction was due to impact of some meteorite or the result of some super volcano.
The study suggests that animals were responsible - the blame lies with the emergence of complex animals that can change their environment. And, that led to the world's first known mass extinction, which took place about 540 million years ago.
This has been reported in ibnlive.com dated 3 September 2015.

In the opinion of Simon Darroch, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, US., it has to be accepted that biological organisms can also drive mass extinction.
This conclusion is based on a comparative study of several communities of Ediacarans which are the world's first multicellular organisms. The study strengthens the concept that it was the appearance of complex animals capable of altering their environments, which we define as 'ecosystem engineers,' that resulted in the disappearance of the Ediacaran.
The study was carried out by researchers and covered extensive palaeoecological and geochemical analysis of the youngest known Ediacaran community exposed in hillside strata in southern Namibia. The site is identified as Farm Swartpunt and it is believed to be 545 million years old.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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