雅思课外读物--New theory for the Mass Extinction（大规模灭绝）

这篇雅思阅读素材是要跟大家分享关于地球生物灭绝的话题。大约4亿年前，在奥陶纪和志留纪期间，地球发生了第二次大规模生物灭绝现象。科学家们提出了解释这一现象的新理论：营养物质的涌入导致海洋植物生长过快，氧气耗尽，结果产生有毒金属物，导致海洋生物畸形，终至灭绝。一起来看看这篇文章吧！

Toxic(有毒的) metals unleashed by depleted(耗尽的;枯竭的)oxygen in the oceans may have helped trigger one of the largest extinctions of life in the planet’s history, new research suggests.

High levels of lead, arsenic, and iron—which continue to harm animals and humans today— appear to have caused deadly deformities(畸形)in tiny, plankton(浮游生物)-like creatures that teemed(充满) in Earth’s ancient seas.

The series of extinctions that occurred during the Ordovician(奥陶纪的)and Silurian(志留纪的)periods between 445 and 415 million years ago wiped out as much as 85 percent of all animal species on Earth. It was the secondlargest mass extinction in history, coming at a time when nearly all existing animals lived in the oceans.

Scientists previously suggested a number of possible scenarios(场景;剧情)to explain the massive die-off, including rapid cooling, volcanic gases poisoning the atmosphere or deadly gamma ray bursts from a hypernova(超新星). But evidence is lacking.

The new theory instead implicates(暗示)changes in ocean chemistry. Metals that naturally lie on the ocean floor dissolve when seawater oxygen drops due to an influx(涌入)of nutrients or other causes.

Rising exposures to the metals are believed to have caused the planktonic creatures to develop into “monstrosities,” according to the study published in Nature Communications.

“Imagine two, three, four individuals that have grown into each other (conjoined twins); monstrosities that have parts of specimens that are many times the size of those of regular specimens, or eggs in a string that are not fully separated,” Thijs Vandenbroucke, of France’s University of Lille and Belgium’s Ghent University wrote in an email.

Vandenbroucke is a paleontologist on an international research team that examined fossils from a1.3-mile-deep bore in the Libyan desert.

The fossils displayed as many as 100 times more deformations than expected from background studies, along with up to 10 times greater heavy metal concentrations. The monstrosities were most pronounced(明显的)in chitinozoans—miniscule, bottle-shaped eggs clad in a durable organic material that lasted millions of years.

Similar deformities are seen in marine and freshwater organisms today, a sign of exposure to high levels of toxic metals, says study co-author Poul Emsbo, ageochemist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado.

For example, in today’s diatoms(硅藻), which are encased in a “perfect, delicate box,”Emsbo says, “the valves of the little box can be completely deformed, such as a zigzag pattern.” Those deformities are routinely used to detect metal pollutionin waters, he said.

While changes in sunlight, pH or salinity(盐分)levels can also trigger deformities in marine life, scientists have found little evidence that any of these occurred at the onset of the Ordovician-Silurian extinction. So the extremely high levels of toxic metals, the authors concluded, are the most likely explanation for this event, and may play a role in other ancient mass extinctions.

“It’s one of the more novel hypotheses(假说)for the Ordovician extinction that I’ve heard,” says University of California, Davis paleoclimatologist Howard Spero, who was not part of the study. “I’m never comfortable with ice sheets as triggers for mass extinctions,” he says, because ice ages may be too short. “And so the idea that the ocean chemistry was playing a significant role… that’s a very intriguing(有趣的) hypothesis.”

Heavy metals can disrupt(破坏) the formation of seashells. And they also harm fish, birds, and other animals, including humans, says Myra Finkelstein,an environmental toxicologist at University of California, Santa Cruz. Lead ishighly toxic across all vertebrate(脊椎的)species. And arsenic can cause cancer.

While the scientists can't say exactly what caused the depleted oxygen in the ocean millions of years ago, leading theories center on increases in nutrients, such as nitrogen, that cause plants to grow faster and use up all the oxygen.