Common Oceanic Ordovician-Silurian Mass Extinction Essay Topics

Common Oceanic Ordovician-Silurian Mass Extinction Essay TopicsThe current National Science Education Standards does not address the Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction, making it difficult for students to understand and interpret the events leading up to and during the extinction. This essay focuses on each of the main classes of events and how they affect this extinction.Some of the primary events leading up to the major extinction were tidal forces. Tidal forces are caused by the pull of water on ocean currents and ocean structures, such as islands. Hurricanes and typhoons, and other storms also pull water away from coasts. Along with tidal forces, there are other factors that lead to the mass extinction.One of the reasons the mass extinction is so difficult to understand is that all the main groups of life were at the same time impacted. The majority of life forms in the Ordovician were living in the sea. Only a handful of the types of creatures found were located on land. The su rvivors of the extinction groupings lived primarily on the ocean and the land.As a result, students need to be able to not only focus on the events leading up to the extinction, but to have a solid understanding of what is happening now. There was a large amount of heat generated due to the CO2 in the atmosphere. This caused oceans to rise and cause sea levels to go up due to excess heat.This volcanic activity in the atmosphere caused volcano eruptions of magma from volcanoes. Magma was transported to the earth's crust where it mixed with water. The heat and vapor from the combination caused the land to warm and buckle and subside, creating an atmosphere for thunderstorms to form and stir up volcanic activity.The earths surface began to cool and the eruption of volcanoes erupted from a new source of magma. This volcanic eruption created lightning, which caused a nuclear chain reaction. This nuclear chain reaction created supernovas, which exploded in a large cloud of debris, blockin g out the sun.There were two types of overall extinctions. At one time, the one that took place 65 million years ago was considered the end of the age of dinosaurs. However, some scientists believe the dinosaurs survived until roughly thirty million years ago.The only species of creature to survive for a long period of time was one of the first group to be affected by the supernova and nuclear chain reaction. The second group that survived was a group of animal called the Cretaceous extinction. These were mainly birds and reptiles.