Virginia Tech released a study Monday that traced the mass loss of life of plants and animals near the end of the Ediacaran Period to the global lack of oxygen availability.
The research, spearheaded by the Virginia Tech College of Science, concluded that at the end of that period, approximately 550 million years ago, many of the animals that needed “significant amounts of oxygen” to survive were not able to live through the geological change.
According to the study, about 80% of animals during that period died and went extinct.
Scott Evans, the postdoctoral researcher who spearheaded the research project, called the extinction event, “environmentally controlled,” noting a pattern in all other recorded mass-extinction events in history.
The remains of animals who lived and died during the Ediacaran Period were first discovered by Australian geologist Reginald C. Sprigg in 1947. The fossils were named after the Australian rock formations they were discovered in Ediacara Hills.
Sprigg’s research describes the Ediacara fauna as “egg-shaped” and unlike any other animal that had previously been discovered.
Many of them were shallow sea creatures and were dominant species in the region before going extinct between 539-550 million years ago, signaling a significant change in multicellular species, evolving into the Earth’s “modern animals,” Evans said.
