The Late Devonian Extinction

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the devastating mass extinctions of the Late Devonian Period, roughly 370 million years ago, when around 70 percent of species disappeared. Scientists are still trying to establish exactly what happened, when and why, but this was not as sudden as when an asteroid hits Earth. The Devonian Period had seen the first trees and soils and it had such a diversity of sea life that it’s known as the Age of Fishes, some of them massive and armoured, and, in one of the iconic stages in evolution, some of them moving onto land for the first time. One of the most important theories for the first stage of this extinction is that the new soils washed into oceans, leading to algal blooms that left the waters without oxygen and suffocated the marine life.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Jessica Whiteside No other episodes
  Associate Professor of Geochemistry in the Department of Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton
• David Bond No other episodes
  Professor of Geology at the University of Hull
• Mike Benton 4 episodes
  Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Bristol

Reading list

• Introduction to Paleobiology and the Fossil Record
  Michael J. Benton and David A. T. Harper (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020) Google Books →
• The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions
  Peter Brannen (Harper Collins, 2017) Google Books →
• Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions
  Tony Hallam (Oxford University Press, 2004) Google Books →
• Mass Extinctions and their Aftermath
  A. Hallam and P. B. Wignall (Oxford University Press, 1997) Google Books →
• The Late Devonian Mass Extinction: The Frasnian/Famennian Crisis
  George R. Mcghee (Columbia University Press, 1996) Google Books →
• When the Invasion of Land Failed: The Legacy of the Devonian Extinctions
  George R. Mcghee (Columbia University Press, 2013)
• Extinction: A Very Short Introduction
  Paul B. Wignall (Oxford University Press, 2019) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m000sz7x

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000sz7x

Auto-category: 560.9 (Fossils)