New York, Aug 20 : Sixty million years of climate change led to the explosive growth of reptiles about 250 million years ago.but not the mass extinction of mammals as was previously believed according to a new Harvard University-led study has concluded.About 250 million years ago at the final stages of the Permian period, and the beginning of the Triassic reptiles have their rates of development and diversity began increasing, resulting in an enthralling array of capabilities bodies, body plans, and characteristics.
For a long time, this growth was attributed to their competition being eliminated through two of the largest mass extinctions (around 261 million and 252 million years in the past) in the history of the planet.
Harvard Palaeontologist Stephanie Pierce’s study indicates that the process of evolution and diversification observed in early reptiles, did not only began before the mass extinctions, but were directly influenced by the factors that was causing them in the beginning, rising global temperatures as a result of climate change.
“Climate change has directly initiated the adaptive reaction of reptiles that helped to create this wide variety of bodies and body types, as well as the unprecedented growth of groups that we observe in the Triassic,” said Tiago R.Simoes who is a postdoctoral researcher in the Pierce lab and the lead author of the study.
In the study, which was published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers offered a thorough review of how a large group of organisms develop due to the effect of climate change.
This is crucial in the present, when temperatures continue to increase.
In reality, the amount of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere is nine times that they were in the period which culminated in the largest climate change-driven mass extinct of the past which occurred 252 million years ago: the Permian Triassic mass extinct.
“Major changes in global temperatures may have significant and diverse effects on biodiversity” explained Stephanie E.Pierce who is curator of vertebrate Palaeontology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
The research involved nearly 8 years of data collection.Simees traveled to more than 20 countries as well as more than 50 museums to collect photographs and scans of over 1,000 fossils of reptiles.
The data showed that increases in global temperaturesthat began around 270 million years old and continued up to about 240 million years old were immediately followed by rapid body changes in the majority of reptile lineages.
For instance there are instances where some of the bigger cold-blooded animals evolved into smaller creatures to cool down more easily; while others developed to live in water to get the similar effect.
Smaller reptiles that led to the creation of the first lizards, tuataras and lizards, were on a different track from their larger reptile cousins according to researchers.
Their evolutionary rates slowed and stabilized in reaction to increasing temperatures.
It was because the smaller-bodied reptiles had already been adjusted to the temperatures as they were able to more quickly shed heat from their bodies as opposed to larger reptiles as temperatures reached a high temperature all over Earth.
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