You may think this is an April Fool's article. But it is what is considered serious research, that backs up claims that methane aka cow flatulence and burping is a disastrous substance that unchecked by technocrats in big government with result in the devastation of life on earth.

I was especially impressed by the use of the scientific term: humongous.

Methane-spewing microbe blamed in Earth's worst mass extinction
By Will Dunham
March 31, 2014



A microbe that spewed humongous amounts of methane into Earth's atmosphere triggered a global catastrophe 252 million years ago that wiped out upwards of 90 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land vertebrates.

That's the hypothesis offered on Monday by researchers aiming to solve one of science's enduring mysteries: what happened at the end of the Permian period to cause the worst of the five mass extinctions in Earth's history.
The scale of this calamity made the one that doomed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago - a six-mile wide asteroid smacking the planet - seem like a picnic by comparison.

The implicated microbe, Methanosarcina, is a member of a kingdom of single-celled organisms distinct from bacteria called archaea that lack a nucleus and other usual cell structures.

...............................................

"Land vertebrates took as long as 30 million years to reach the same levels of biodiversity as before the extinction, and afterwards life in the oceans and on land was radically changed, dominated by very different groups of animals," Fournier said.

The first dinosaurs appeared 20 million years after the Permian mass extinction.

"One important point is that the natural environment is sensitive to the evolution of microbial life," said Daniel Rothman, an MIT geophysics professor who led the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

...............................................

Methanosarcina is still found today in places like oil wells, trash dumps and the guts of animals like cows.

More:
http://news.yahoo.com/methane-spewing-mi...zlT5kgA7g_QtDMD

Quote: PzLdr wrote in post #2

---

Democrats were around 275 million years ago?

---