ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Nearly One-Third of Ocean Animals Perished 2.6 Million Years Ago

By Brandon Specktor, Senior Writer

For tens of millions of years, Earth's oceans were crowded with 5,000-lb. (2,200 kilograms) turtles, whale-size sea cows and sharks as large as school buses. Then, about 2.6 million years ago, they started dying in droves.





The mass die-off known as the Pliocene marine megafauna extinction may have wiped out more than a third of Earth's large marine species (including the beloved megalodon — a Jaws-like shark that measured up to 80 feet, or 25 meters, long). Today, scientists still don't know exactly why it happened.

A new paper scheduled to be published in the 2019 edition of the journal Astrobiology suggests one bold possibility: Perhaps exploding stars helped slay the giants of the deep.

According to Adrian Melott, lead study author and professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas, there is evidence that a nearby supernova — or possibly a string of multiple supernovas — coincided with the start of the great die-off that rid the world of its largest marine life.





If these stellar explosions were strong enough and close enough to Earth, they could have drenched the world in stellar radiation, gradually raising the incidence of mutation rates and cancers among Earthly fauna for hundreds of years.

This amped-up supply of cosmic radiation, coupled with other known factors like climate change, could have been one of the levers of change that doomed Earth's marine giants.

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Okay, so that's the SCIENCE. Now let's add the FICTION!
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How might this theory fit in with my New Land Unknown concept for a hidden sea beneath the Antarctic ice? Click here to find out!

Beneath Antarctica's Ice, Evidence of Lost Continents!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)