Azerbaijan National Academy of Science

Scientists at New York University in the United States have discovered that the mass extinction of animals on Earth, including amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, is cyclical.

This process occurs every 27 million years and coincides with global natural disasters.

Research shows that extinction in Earth's history is the result of large asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions accompanied by large lava flows.

"Floods can occur over a period of 27 million years, with the collapse of large bodies that create basalt volcanism and the impulses of the Earth's internal activity, as well as the extinction of the orbit in the galaxy," said the authors of the study.

Thus, 66 million years ago, 70% of all life on the planet was destroyed by an asteroid impact. Later, paleontologists discovered that such mass extinctions were not accidental, but had a certain turnover.

The authors of the new scientific study examined the information about the mass extinction of terrestrial animals and came to the conclusion that it coincided with the extinction of ocean life.

They conducted new statistical analysis and estimated that these events covered a period of about 27.5 million years.

Mass extinction is not a single cycle event. The age of the collision craters created by asteroids and comets falling on the Earth's surface also corresponds to that time frame.

Astrophysicists have suggested that comets rain in the solar system every 26 to 30 million years, crash into planets, and cause mass extinctions.

"It is already known that three times the mass extinction of species on land and at sea occurred at the same time as the three largest cosmic impacts in the last 250 million years," the scientists said.

New data proves that the cause of disasters is not only in space. Eight mass extinctions on land and in the oceans coincided with basalt eruptions. These eruptions were to be accompanied by ice ages, acid rain, ozone depletion, and rising radiation levels.

Sputnik Azərbaycan