Asklemmy @lemmy.ml PeriodicallyPedantic @lemmy.ca 2mo ago

What is your favorite extinction event, and why?

I'm probably going to judge you if you say Holocene, without an interesting non-trivial reason.

44 comments

The oxygenation of the ocean. Never knew that was a mass extinction! So much interesting stuff came from that!
- That's my fav too.
  "The Oxygen Catastrophy" is just such a cool name.
  
  Also some upstart bacteria just start pumping out poison that kills almost everything (oxygen)
  
  Causes the ocean to rust
  
  Causes the atmosphere to catch on fire
  
  then causes the earth to turn to a snowball
  
  Fuckin metal
- This is the one where the ocean turned purple wasnt it?
  
  Sounds right. I saw a documentary about it a fee months ago.
I wouldn't call any extinction event a favorite, because it is a loss. An interesting one that is less known than the Dodo is that the wake island rail bird was hunted to extinction by starving Japanese soldiers in WWII. The Americans blockaded the island, trapping the Japanese there, and they ate all the birds in just a couple years time.

I think it's an interesting extinction because it's an unintended casualty of war.
- I was asking for extinction events, aka mass extinctions.
  But this is still very interesting! Thanks for sharing it with me
Not a full on extinction event, but the late bronze age collapse has always fascinated me. So much do that it led me to pursue archaeology in college.

So many theories, everyone has their favourite, but yeah, what ultimately caused every near eastern civilisation as well as the Mycenaean Greeks to just all collapse and disappear over a relatively short 200 years or so (archaeologically speaking a blink-of-an-eye)
The Holocene.
- The Holocene.
- I'm judging you, not because you chose the Holocene, but for how easy it was to get people without interesting opinions to identify themselves 😏
  
  I was just teasing. But you received some really interesting replies. Good post!
whichever the next one is that'll be my favorite
- I think we're in the start of it now, let's gooooo
When the hyper intelligent dinosaurs lost control of their nuclear power plants and their society collapsed.

Just a pet theory of mine.
- They made it. They're in the delta quadrant.
  
  wheres the star wars but with dinosaurs series?
Discussion: you can have an "extinction event" in any ecosystem-- not just biological ones.

For example, the abandonment of steam locomotives in the mid-20th-century, or the Home Computer crash of the 1980s.

Similar to a biological mass extinction, you have:

A discernable ecosystem change, either a sudden event (the introduction of reliable, mass-produced diesel locomotives), or a measurable decline of "habitability factors" (as hundreds of firms brought cheap 8-bit computers to market, retail space and overall consumer interest saturated)

a rapid diversification of new and exotic types to fill the vacated niches (the cabless "B-unit" and flexible "road-switcher" locomotive types didn't exist in the steam era. The post-crash computer market brought in new entrants like cheap IBM clones, the C128 and Atari 130XE, all chasing a sub-$1000 market that was now free of Sinclair, Coleco, and Texas Instruments)

followed by a shake out and consolidation of the survivors/winners as they select for fitness in the new world (ALCO was a strong #2 in the diesel locomotive market in 1950, but didn't make it to 1970. The C128 never became the world-beater its predecessor did.)

a few niches largely untouched (China was still building steam locomotives into the 1990s. The Apple II series lasted about as long.)
- I like it!
  I kind of feel like "locomotive" itself is a niche so this is more like a collapse of a niche rather than a mass extinction, but I love the analogies
The Azolla Event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event. I mean it is cool and the major climate shift it helped create certainly caused some extinctions. But plants can change the world, never forget!
- Very cool!
  
  It reminds me of my fav, The Oxygen Catastrophy, where basically a plant did something new and caused the earth to freeze. In this case, by converting methane to carbon dioxide, a much weaker greenhouse gas.
  
  Ooh, since this is a safe space for dorks, I would like to be pedantic myself. Thank you for the opportunity. The oxygen catastrophe was caused by cyanobacteria-like organisms, which are photosynthetic, but are not plants. But it’s true, all bio-mass matters!
The ongoing one, cause I get to take part in it!
- Hell yeah, this one is ours!
- I'm judging you, as I said I would
The one with the internet, whatever that's called.
- Yep, that one's the Holocene.
Devonian. I was extincting before it was cool.
Zombie apocalypse. Anyone left over is either immune from the cause or smart enough to avoid it.

Just me but I like the idea of a peaceful world.
Not sure if it counts but the devonian extinction is probably my favorite. Wiped out a bunch of marine vertebrates (I hate fish, they had it coming)

The theories behind why it happened changed, and it's technically two small extinction events. Although it is pretty big iirc >95% of the worlds vertebrates died off and did not come back
The current one playing out. Because I 'm tired.
- That's the Holocene, and I'm judging you.
The next one of course
- *current
Nice try, FBI!
Im not mad about this current one.
- Were you mad about the others?
  
  Fuming
Great Dying 2: The Human Boo Boo

I like it because I have been unwillingly participating in it for decades. 70% loss of population on average for monitored species since 1970. It is not going to get better any time soon either.
The Oxygen catastrophe. Without it I wouldn't exist.

44 comments