Scientists say that the mass extinction of marine creatures may be due to the movement of the continents. According to the researchers, the position of the continents could fill the water with oxygen necessary for life, but their movement could lead to the opposite effect, reports Scitechdaily..

[see_also ids\u003d"

“Continental drift seems so slow, like it can’t lead to anything drastic, but when the ocean is in its prime, even a seemingly insignificant event can cause a massive death of marine life,” said Andy Ridgewell, co-author of the new study..

The reverse flow carries nutrients released from sunken organic matter back to the surface, where they promote plankton growth.. Today, the Earth's oceans are rich in a variety of species of fish and other animals, whose life is supported both by a continuous supply of oxygen from the depths and organic matter from the surface..

A new study has shown that this circulation of oxygen and nutrients can stop.. Scientists used computer simulations to see if the movement of the continents affects this circulation. And we were surprised to find that such an influence is really present..

“Many millions of years ago, shortly after life began in the ocean, the entire global circulation of the ocean seemed to stop intermittently.. We were surprised to find that the movement of the continents can cause surface water and oxygen to stop sinking, and possibly drastically affect how life evolved on Earth, ”said Ridgewell..

Until now, the models that have been used to study the evolution of marine oxygen over the past 540 million years have been relatively simple and do not take into account ocean circulation.. In these models, ocean anoxia - times when oxygen in the ocean disappeared - implied a drop in the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere.

According to the lead author of the study, Alexander Paul, scientists had previously assumed that changes in the level of oxygen in the ocean reflects similar processes in the atmosphere.. The new work, for the first time, used a model in which the ocean was represented in three dimensions and in which currents were taken into account.. The model showed that the collapse of the global water circulation could lead to a sharp separation of oxygen levels at upper and lower depths..

This separation meant that the entire seafloor, with the exception of shallow areas near the coast, was completely deprived of oxygen for many tens of millions of years, up to about 440 million years ago.. According to scientists, this meant death for all creatures that could not swim closer to the surface of the water.. However, there was still enough oxygen in the atmosphere.

The authors of the new work do not indicate whether something like this can happen again in the future, and when. Determining when a collapse will occur, as well as what will cause it, is quite difficult..

At the same time, existing climate models confirm that increasing global warming will weaken ocean circulation, and some models even predict a possible collapse of the circulation branch starting in the North Atlantic..

According to Ridgewell, theoretically, an unusually warm summer or rock erosion could set off a cascade of processes that "