The end of the dinosaurs is just one mysterious mass extinction in the Earth’s long history.
Before the dinosaur die-out was the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction that allowed the beasts to dominate the seas and land. A new study in the journal Science suggests that the event that wiped out most marine life (though not sharks) wasn’t a volcanic eruption or asteroid, but a big bloop of methane released into the environment from the seafloor.
Here’s the catch: Methane is stable at certain temperatures. As it gets warmer, it gets less stable. Meaning that our warming atmosphere and oceans could force another bloop of methane up and we’d disappear just like the dinosaurs.