The first land plants to evolve penetrating root systems, around 400 million years ago, may very well have triggered a series of mass extinctions in the ocean.
The expansion of plants onto terra firma was
In the Devonian, as root systems grew more complex and moved further inland, more and more phosphorus would have been dumped into the marine environment. While scientists have suspected tree roots of playing a role in Devonian mass extinctions before, this study is one of the first to calculate the magnitude and timing of phosphorus delivery from land to water.
Peaks of phosphorus exportation did not necessarily coincide in time or magnitude at each site studied, but the authors say that's to be expected. The colonization of land by plants was not a"single punctuated event", they,"but likely staggered geographically, peaking at different times in different parts of Euramerica and other parts of the Devonian Earth."
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