Earth's First Mass Extinction Was By Animals, Not Volcano, Study

The earth's first massive extinction was not due to a meteorite or super volcano, according to information discovered by Vanderbilt University study. The real reason was due to the evolution of early animals, according to The Week .

The evidence shows that the earth's first animals, such as vertebrates, mollusks and jellyfish, consumed the Ediacarans, who co-existed until they were all exterminated 60 million years ago, according to The Times of India.

First microbes ruled the earth for over 3 billon years, according to Phys.org, complex organisms evolved into animals over millions of years.

The Ediacarans were exterminated and then animals led to the Cambrian explosion, which was a 25-million-year period in which there were modern animal families.

The complex, multicellular forms called Ediacarans, which took over the planet around 600 million years ago were basically like plants---immobile marine life that had shapes "like discs, tubes, fronds, or quilts".

"These new species were 'ecological engineers' who changed the environment in ways that made it more and more difficult for the Ediacarans to survive," said Simon Darroch, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University.

"People have been slow to recognize that biological organisms can also drive mass extinction," said Darroch. "This study provides the first quantitative palaeoecological evidence to suggest that evolutionary innovation, ecosystem engineering, and biological interactions may have ultimately caused the first mass extinction of complex life," according to hngn.

Unfortunately, some parallels have been drawn with the modern world. "There is a powerful analogy between the Earth's first mass extinction and what is happening today," Darroch observed. "The end-Ediacaran extinction shows that the evolution of new behaviors can fundamentally change the entire planet, and we are the most powerful 'ecosystem engineers' ever known."