The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions

by Peter Brannen

And at 579 million years ago, it’s about 579 million years before modern humans, whose years on this planet are measured in hundreds of thousands rather than millions.

A sentiment exists—particularly among nonscientists—that the idea of humans seriously disrupting the planet on a geological scale is mere anthropocentric hubris. But this sentiment misunderstands the history of life. In the geological past, seemingly small innovations have reorganized the planet’s chemistry, hurling it into drastic phase changes. Surely humans might be as significant as the filter-feeding animals of the Cambrian Explosion.

In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the major features of that historic battlefield—and crucially, the course of the decisive battle itself—were shaped by the apocalyptic geology of the mass extinction. The gradual slope up Cemetery Ridge where Pickett’s charge met its grisly fate is shaped by the underlying magmatic plumbing of End-Triassic volcanism: it is giant sills of basalt that give the battlefield its contours.

“If a hammer, bicycle chain, pair of pliers, and pollen were placed in a platinum crucible and warmed with hydrofluoric acid for a week, the metal objects would be digested or highly corroded, while the pollen walls would remain virtually unaltered.”

“There are twice as many species of birds as there are mammals,” Paul Olsen told me. “So we’re still living in the age of dinosaurs. Mammals have never been as successful as dinosaurs. Still aren’t.”