20030928

Geologist Gregory Ryskin of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois thinks a massive methane explosion frothing out of the world\\\'s oceans 250 million years ago caused the Earth\\\'s worst mass extinction. According to Ryskin the possibility that such a event would happen again is a very conjectural idea but it\\\'s too important to ignore.

At the end of the Periman period up tom95% of Earth\\\'s marine species disappeared wile some 70% of land species, including plants, insects and vertebrates, also perished. Ryskin contends that methane from bacterial decay or from frozen methane hydrates in deep oceans began to be released. Under the enormous pressure from water above, the gas dissolved in the water at the bottom of the ocean and was trapped there as its concentration grew.

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