Solving a Mass Murder (IMAGE)

Washington University in St. Louis

Solving a Mass Murder

Caption

Washington University in St. Louis geologist David Fike holds a 443-million-year-old slab of Ordovician limestone from Anticosti Island in Quebec that is sprinkled with the fossilized remains of marine creatures killed during a cooling pulse. New research suggests the mass extinction, which took place 440 million years ago was caused by a sequence of events that allowed volcanoes to inject reflective aerosols above the tropopause.

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Jerry Naunheim Jr./WUSTL Photos.

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