It Seems like Trees Caused a Mass Extinction

When it comes to mass extinctions, you probably imagine giant volcanic eruptions or asteroids raining fire from the sky, but sometimes these events can have some unexpected causes.
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Sources:
www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/a...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
www.lyellcollection.org/doi/f...
bioone.org/journals/paleontol...
www.lyellcollection.org/doi/f...
www.geosociety.org/documents/...
www.britannica.com/animal/pla...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/e...
www.nature.com/articles/s4147...
www.eurekalert.org/news-relea...
Images:
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[@SciShow]

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[@davethepak]

Would be great - except makes me answer too many questions and jump through hoops before I can even see the cost and plan. Royally a pain as I was wanting to buy a gift plan using the sci-show discount. Bad customer relationship management design on their part. Love sci-show, dislike brilliant sign up user experience. Not going to create an account BEFORE I see the cost of the plan.

[@Fredericksburg91]

"Trees are the crabs of the plant world" is a phrase I can only hope to quote some day. Love it.

[@everettduncan7543]

There's even a species of violet from Hawaii that is a tree!

[@jessebob325]

🦀🌴

[@josemv25]

You just did

[@lucaslevinsky8802]

Aren't crabs the ultimate lifeform?

[@Svensk7119]

Indeed.

[@JohnDrummondPhoto]

"Trees are the crabs of the plant world"... Whoever wrote that deserves a raise. It's so true. How else is it that locust trees and bean vines are both legumes, and that strawberries and apple trees are both roses?

[@jasonreed7522]

Wait apple trees are roses? I guess that explains the thorn apple which is basically just a thorny tree with a fruit nobody particularly cares about. (I'm sure its edible but why bother with it when normal apple trees exist and don't have thorns)

[@JohnDrummondPhoto]

@@jasonreed7522 yes. The family Rosaceae includes roses, apples, peaches, cherries, strawberries, blackberries, hawthorns, and over 4000 other species.

[@Rinsuki]

@@jasonreed7522 Yeah which is why their flowers look similar. Also, roses produce rose hips which kind of is their "fruit". Fun fact mangoes are part of the same family as poison ivy so mango sap is as annoying as poison ivy. I should know I became allergic to mango sap as an adult.

[@mabylene]

@@Rinsuki I just saw this about mangos on a Sci-Show short about the skin on the fruit and leaves excreting urushiol, which is the same compound that most people are allergic to from poison ivy and poison oak plants. Very interesting!

[@jasonreed7522]

@@Rinsuki at this point i should probably just never be surprised when plants have weird relatives, after all potatoes and tomatoes are both nightshades. (Not sure about tomatoes but i know potato plants are very posionous with basically the only exception being the tuber, and that can be messed up by using the actual seeds and not seed potatoes. Additionally green potatoes are posionous because they were exposed to sunlight they made the poison as insecticide to protect themselves, and the green is chlorophyll.)

[@SiqueScarface]

Another problem was that the tree trunks did not decompose, as fungi weren't wide spread in the Devonian. So the trees did not only catch the Carbon Dioxide, they also did not release it after their death. That's why the age after the Devon is now called Carbon -- because of all the carbon deposits from that time better known as coal.

[@thetobyntr9540]

Fungi capable of digesting wood* They were widespread but it took a while to learn to digest lignin efficiently.

[@Svensk7119]

Carboniferous.

[@solar0wind]

Oh, that explains it. I was confused how trees could've stored so much CO2.

[@SiqueScarface]

@@Svensk7119 Sorry. about that. In my native language, the names are somewhat shorter. Triassic for instance is just Trias, Carboniferous is Carbon, and Cretaceous is Kreide.

[@Svensk7119]

@@SiqueScarface Ah! I love discussing tongues. May I ask what language?

[@lakrids-pibe]

Trees are the crabs of the plant world. I understood that, and that makes me proud of myself.

[@TheaSvendsen]

Lol, me too :) I almost never get the reference

[@glenngriffon8032]

All plants become trees,all animals become crabs. So the perfect ecosystem is a world of giant crabs that are also part tree like something you'd see in a Zelda game.

[@PlutosAsleep]

me too!

[@howdy4504]

"trees are like crabs" I knew what you meant, and most of us here knew what you meant, but knowing what other people with no context of carcinization would have thought of that sentence gave me a laugh

[@Alcatrazrezz]

As a landscaper I can confirm trees do have tough stalks that allow to stand up right

[@TragoudistrosMPH]

To Landscape artist: Draw me like one of your French trees... tough and upright...

[@Alcatrazrezz]

@@TragoudistrosMPH ha 🤣

[@raythegardener]

Excellent. Always get confirmation from the pros.

[@screwyourhandle]

As someone who hasn't gone outside since 2019, thanks for the update

[@Jean-FrancoisBilodeau]

"Trees are kind of the crabs of the plant world." 🤣🤣🤣

[@patrickdurham8393]

So the next time someone says we need to save the trees I can tell them no they killed the trilobites and I'll never forgive them!

[@TragoudistrosMPH]

In defense of the trees, trilobites probably ate our great infinity vertebrate grandparents! Spineless monsters 😢

[@shadowjewel]

I heard about the great cooling and mass extinction cause by trees before, where the polar caps expanded to many times what they are now in a massive ice age. I heard that the thing believed to have ended the event was the evolution of fungi able to break down the cellulose in dead trees that had previously just been accumulating and locking all that CO2 into the ground.

[@MJ-gw2zu]

That sounds about right considering lineages, genealogy, and biological functions but the grey area is how that competetion underground looked with small mammals and insects like ants, who both seem quite vulnerable to fungi as well.

[@juanausensi499]

@@MJ-gw2zu Ants came in the Cretaceous, and Mammals in the Triassic

[@charliecrossing]

I got inordinately excited hearing Michael's voice at the beginning. Also, I love that Arborization is a thing

[@moist_onions]

I thought it was that annoying John green guy, and even now I only hear his voice

[@nicollekyostia6764]

Right! What a great word. Arborization. (I may be a nerd, but I love it when I hear a big word for the first time and I don't have to look it up to know what it means)😊

[@yesdnilegiap788]

When a Sci Show video comes up in my feed, but I'm not particularly interested in the topic, if it's a Michael Aranda video, I will watch it anyway. Because I love him.

[@eric2500]

As an oxygen breather, I will always appreciate trees.

[@awaredeshmukh3202]

Don't forget the plankton! They are vital to our lives!

[@LuisAldamiz]

But you're only oxygen-breather because trees dictate it. Also there are many other things that produce oxygen, such as archaea, bacteriae and algae. Grass even!

[@clusterfer]

This episode was "treerific".

[@GnomaPhobic]

Interesting. I had heard the quip implied by the title, but I'm glad you pointed out the complex nature at hand. Few things in life are as simple as such an easy cause and effect relationship.

[@StuffandThings_]

Personally, I believe it was a combination of the assembling of Pangaea along with the evolution of early trees. The earliest forests developed in the Middle Devonian, yet the extinction still would take millions of years more to occur. Meanwhile, once the Rheic finally closed in the Late Devonian, not only was there the added pressure of sedimentation, nutrient runoff, and global cooling from trees but the ocean currents would have drastically changed (which has caused quite some chaos in the Cenozoic, when the Drake Passage deepened and Antarctica froze, or when the Panama isthmus closed and may have helped trigger the Quaternary Ice Age) and invasive species would have taken over other regions. Like a big one two punch of bad timing. Whats even more interesting is that there were actually a few niche plant groups that didn't make it through the Late Devonian extinction, like Tetraxylopteris.

[@jasonreed7522]

Usually it is a combination of factors making a perfect storm when any individual factor wouldn't be "that bad". And the real trouble is seeing the distant past is hard and there is a certain sadness at knowing that a large but unquantifiable amount of information simply doesn't exist anymore and is forever lost to time. This also causes problems where without a time machine we literally never will know some things and we also don't know what we will never know. Existential crisis over, you are probably right that trees were just a stressor and when combined with other stressors like tectonic events, ocean current changes, sediment, ect it pushed it over the edge to cause a mass extinction. In a way its like the current extinction even marking the start of the anthropocene, and 1 factor like habit destruction, climate change, chemical & plastic polution, light & sound polution, ect is bad enough but everything at once overwhelms significantly more species turning a minor extinction event into a bunch of minor events simultaneously which then is labeled a true mass extinction. (Because thats what it will look like in the rocks in a few million years)

[@StuffandThings_]

@@jasonreed7522 Oh yes, I do believe that the Late Devonian extinction is by far the closest approximation to what is currently going on with the Holocene mass extinction event. There, the sedimentation was caused by aforestation, and currently we're getting the same effect due to deforestation now that deep soils have been the norm for hundreds of millions of years. Toss in some chaotic climatic changes amongst an ice age (the Late Devonian likely had some short ice ages not unlike the current Quaternary Ice Age), a surge of invasive species, and relatively recent vast changes to ocean currents. Plus, of course, all the toxic stuff humans like to put out and other various stressors you mentioned. Hell, the current continental arrangement is even vaguely similar, with many of the continents clustered together with vast xeric interiors. Scariest part is that the Late Devonian was really, _really_ bad, to the point that reef ecosystems wouldn't truly recover until the Cenozoic and certainly didn't look the same, and biodiversity had a rather long term low (which may have been helped along by Pangaea, as supercontinents aren't great for life). And what do ya know, the reefs currently are getting obliterated, although this time land life is getting hammered pretty bad too through deforestation and agriculture so who knows where that will lead...

[@Brownyman]

Does this mean the human obsession with cutting down trees is the payback for what they did to the trilobites?

[@sion8]

They know what they did!

[@Me3stR]

I am happy you (indirectly) addressed your own studio's quote, " 'Trees' aren't a real thing. Don't believe the hype."

[@FloozieOne]

As usual you have done an episode on something I never heard of before along with the science that caused it. I love this because it widens my knowledge but also because it shows just how little I, (and often scientists), know about our planet and the universe that surrounds us. We will never know everything so the excitement of discovery will never end which is reassuring.

[@fishfinn2204]

i've been warning people for years that trees are dangerous, and no one has listened to me, yet here we are

[@smooth9169]

Alright now buddy.

[@Merennulli]

Unbe-leaf-able. Trees just packed their trunks, moved out and tried to branch out and em-bark on a new lifestyle, but get branded the root of other species' problems. After the exhausting effort to get set up on land, they tried for-rest but the fish woodn't let them. Maybe they should hire Timber-ton to make a movie telling their side.

[@sandybarnes887]

Lol 😂 very punny. I love it

[@samwill7259]

You turn around and suddenly? Trees. My god.

[@TSB43]

I hate how the YT algorithm fazes out amazing channels like SCIShOW from my timeline. I am writing this comment to help the algorithm keep videos from this channel to continue appearing on my scroll log.

[@bulletpunch9317]

Whats keeping you from subbing?

[@MrNicoJac]

That's literally what the sub button is for, duh

[@TSB43]

@@bulletpunch9317 your comment is irrelevant to mine. Has nothing to do with what I said.

[@TSB43]

@@MrNicoJac your comment is irrelevant to the point. You think I wasn’t already subscribed to the channel? This is a great learning opportunity. You can be subscribed to any channel. There is an algorithm that adjusts to your viewing. I’m already subscribed and notifications are on for SciShow but that doesn’t guarantee me seeing their every video when I scroll. I was merely leaving a comment on this video to alert the YT algorithm to my interest in this particular channel. So go DUH yourself

[@MrNicoJac]

@@TSB43 Lol, it even shows me videos that I've already put into my own Watch Later list. Sounds like you struggle to keep up with your subscriptions. Which is what the bell icon is for, lol.

[@Articulate99]

Always interesting, thank you.

[@32Loveless50]

interesting. i believe it, as well one of the first mass extinction where caused by algae :D

[@LilReaper1010]

I have a few fossils from the late Devonian period, and our hypothesis was that it was a large 'storm bed' , but this die off hypothesis sounds more accurate.

[@screenplaya4562]

Alternate Title: "The Last March of the Ents, IRL"

[@TheArboristPT]

Fascinating video 🌳

[@daniellassander]

Since the oceans absorb a lot of the Co2 in the atmosphere the concentration of Co2 in the oceans would drop rather drastically. Which means organisms that used Co2 such as algea and other microbes which is the foundation for life in the oceans would be less prevalent meaning that the abundance of nutrients in the oceans at this time would drop which of course would hurt the creatures living in the oceans at this time. Another problem was that the trees themselves didnt decompose so a lot of nutrients were trapped in the dead trees which are now the foundation for our coal deposits maybe even gas and oil deposits but that is just a mere guess so i could easily be wrong on those two. Trees themselves also binds the topsoil so it doesnt wash away into our oceans which again would deplete the nutrients in the oceans, especially nitrogen compounds as plants binds a lot of nitrogen compounds for later use as its so sparse to them. There could potentially have been a huge drop in available Magnesium as trees has a lot of leaves and magnesium is the backbone of chlorophyll.

[@jermpeeps]

The Happening lol

[@exnihilo415]

Beat me to it. Have my upvote!

[@edh2246]

Imagine a world without trees. No spears, no clubs, no humans.

[@supercussion6590]

No oil

[@TuxedoMaskMusic]

I am working on it.

[@LuisAldamiz]

We're an igenuous bunch, I'm sure we can make something with bones, rocks or whatever. Early humans almost certainly used rather hand axes (Acheulean technology is all about almond-shaped hand axes, those Homo erectus had little imagination).

[@Ascend777]

These hypothesizes are still great tho. There are better than wild guesses!

[@ixchelssong]

*hypotheses (The word you used is a verb.)

[@Ascend777]

@@ixchelssong thx. lol. spelling is not my farte.

[@anubis2814]

Grass also killed off a lot of species.

[@akumaking1]

What hasn’t caused a mass extinction at this point?

[@YoungGandalf2325]

God.

[@DJFracus]

@@YoungGandalf2325 If God created the universe, then he's caused all of the mass extinctions.

[@chriswaldrip2739]

If we find a tree holding a smoking gun, we’ll have a whole new batch of questions!

[@AquariumWizard]

Idk that i have seen this speaker yet on the scishow vids i have watched. Good addition to the team if they are new. If they are not new, then my bad, still good job

[@victoriarees4540]

2:50 that ain't no twig, that's a whoopin switch

[@docjoe86]

Michael Aranda is still alive!

[@TragoudistrosMPH]

Shhh, don't alert those trees...

[@emmanuelweinman9673]

There should be a whole series proving to everyone how everyone and thing is connected. There are so many scales that vibe harmoniously to form our universe, starting at the quantum and ending at the universal (at least with our current observations). And everything (particles, atoms, molecules, organs, organisms, species, planetary domains, solar systems, galactic clusters, universal webs) is somehow all connected. No idea how, but it is. We are ❤

[@General12th]

Hi Michael!

[@omegamanrad]

Land creatures “draw 4”

[@stax6092]

Neat.

[@A5056.]

Source material for the devonian extinction hypothesis is M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening".

[@cm5g]

darn you trees

[@o80y1]

The Onceler tried to hold back the power of The Lorax 😳

[@flyer3455]

Naturally, the trilobites should have passed legislation to phase out all trees.

[@ericarichardson2983]

The final twist ending to The Happening. It Happened😂

[@FacesintheStone]

200th comment! Thanks for the mini lecture!

[@maureensurdez7841]

Nice job, presenter!

[@AlvarM]

"Plants are life" . . 🌱: hold your breath

[@ladyeowyn42]

Mass Extinctions normally happen due to flood basalts (catastrophic lava eruption). Cool to see another mechanism.

[@lyndsaybrown8471]

SciShow finally explaining why Grass is super effective against Water types

[@Arkie80]

Primordial trees: 'Hold my beer. Let me show you how it's done boys.'

[@raythegardener]

Ents gone bad

[@tranquil_dude]

I've just noticed an interesting "pattern" in the big 5 mass extinction events. Looking at their "main trigger" (based on research so far): End Ordovician: Environmental change caused by primitive land plants End Devonian: Environmental change caused by primitive trees End Permian: Volcanic activity (Siberian Traps) End Triassic: Volcanic activity (Central Atlantic Magmatic Province) End Cretaceous: Asteroid impact End of current era: to be seen :| Note that the main trigger of the 2nd event was basically a reiteration of that of the 1st event, and the main trigger of the 4th event was basically a reiteration of that of the 3rd. As for the 5th to 6th event, most people feel that the next (i.e. 6th) mass extinction will be due to ecological degradation by human activity ... but still it's good to be prepared for incoming giant space rocks, just in case :| Also, the Permian and Triassic periods when all the continents were combined as Pangea, which may have exerted some kind of continuous severe geological pressure, causing volcanism to be amplified again and again, hence the repeat of mass extinction by volcanic eruption.

[@hyperswag506]

Like how banana trees are actually herbs.

[@Drace90]

Don't tell me Shyamalan had a point.

[@aidanharrison5992]

This guys John Green impression is pretty good

[@C.viscione]

Probably this is the inspiration for M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening

[@paddleduck5328]

Lol that’s what I thought of when I saw the title 😄

[@lakshmimohan6467]

Fossilized tree holding smoking gun 🤣

[@tinybee7780]

I don't know why this showed up in my feed, but to quote the great Mark Whalberg to help answer the question to this video's title: "What!?!...No!"

[@TheCrisses]

also consider significant capture of water from the water cycle now being stored in trees instead. It could have an effect on water cycles & ocean salinity. I don't know, not being a scientist, how much an effect the water sequestering would have made.

[@Calastein]

…but the Earth and everything on it is only 4500years old! I read that in a ‘book’?

[@radagast6682]

I still like trees.😂

[@SEELE-ONE]

IIRC, plants, or more accurately, photosynthetic organisms have spearheaded like 3-4 mass extinctions by merely altering the atmosphere’s gas composii

[@yancgc5098]

Photosynthetic organisms caused the very first mass extinction with the Great Oxidation Event, and shortly afterwards the first Snowball Earth event. The Cryogenian, which was the second Snowball Earth event, was only partly their fault. And finally there’s the Late Paleozoic Ice Age which was entirely their fault, and they were so dominant that the cold and dry climate that they caused collapsed the Carboniferous Rainforest, essentially destroying themselves. Basically, too much of anything is bad, including plants and trees.

[@SEELE-ONE]

@@yancgc5098 don’t forget the Azolla event during the Eocene, where the aquatic ferns supposedly triggered the late Cenozoic Ice Age

[@yancgc5098]

@@SEELE-ONE Oh yeah that too. They decreased CO2 levels from 3500 ppm down to 650 ppm during the event, and eventually in the glacial periods the CO2 levels were down by more than 90%. Those aquatic ferns went crazy to say the least.

[@belstar1128]

The rise of complex life on land would have caused huge changes to the planet for sure.

[@instaperil]

The tree in petter Beckman photo what kind of fruit is that?

[@IAMNOTGOODWITHCOMPUT]

Did driftwood have an impact?

[@1969kodiakbear]

Trees. Broca's area, or the Broca area is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually the left, of the brain with functions linked to speech production. 2/8/2021 and I lived again. Broca's aphasia (non-fluent aphasia) Mike Caputo, Year 1 Stroke Recovery, Up Up Up - Aphasia with attitude, Broca's Aphasia, Right-side Weakness, Mark's 22 years-old Stroke: Broca's Aphasia.

[@o80y1]

The trees stole Hank’s mineral collection

[@TragoudistrosMPH]

Futurama tree episode lol

[@Yetuntitled]

👍

[@williambrasky3891]

Trees are the enemy? Trees are the enemy. Trees are the enemy!

[@capnstewy55]

Shared roots lol.

[@lordgarion514]

I bet the Earth smelled all kinds of funky a few times in history.

[@jeremybracken8041]

5:02 it would be odd for the trees to have guns, and also for them to still be smoking after all this time

[@nicholasmuoio7687]

Mark Walberg knew it the whole time

[@hilaryh9410]

Heck with cloning the wooly mammoth, scientists should look to clone those first trees since they were apparently that good at sucking carbon dioxide out of the environment!

[@CarFreeSegnitz]

Trees were good at sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere because nothing in nature knew how to unlock the carbon the trees had sucked in. Trees got big and strong due to the lignin protein. But fungus figured out how to eat lignin about 20 million years after trees started using it. During this time all the coal beds were laid down that we clever apes are now digging up and liberating back into the atmosphere. We can no longer depend on trees to lock away carbon longterm due to fungus.

[@SSJ22Terris]

Cloning the trees wouldn't be possible because there's no DNA evidence remaining. DNA degrades like any part of a corpse, and only under super ideal preservative conditions (like being frozen) can it be made to survive for long periods of time. The 10,000's of years old Mammoth remains are just about the oldest possible remains can be and still preserve DNA, even under ideal conditions. The 100,000,000's scale were dealing with on the Late Devonian, is just way too far out.

[@Klepto]

Even if that was possible (and assuming they would survive), it wouldn't make much difference today. Part of the reason so much CO^2 got locked up was the lack of organisms to break down early plants/trees pika

[@TragoudistrosMPH]

They might have been less efficient, actually. The first don't have to be competitive. Today's issue is cutting down without replacing them... 😮‍💨

[@StuffandThings_]

Well, firstly there was a lot more CO2 back then for plants to suck out of the atmosphere, and also as was already mentioned microorganisms wouldn't evolve to break down lignin (a compound in wood) until after the Carboniferous. Arborescent lycopsids like Sigillaria and Lepidodendron also had a tendency to grow really fast and then fall over due to rather shallow root systems. All of this lead to absolutely insane rates of coal generation, hundreds of times that of today. Unfortunately these conditions can't exactly be replicated, not to mention the fact that you simply can't get any DNA from them. Some of the Devonian plants were crazy cool though, it really is a shame that we can't ever experience them.

[@lordbalthosadinferni4384]

My favorite forest? What forests?

[@nicollekyostia6764]

Now I consider myself an intelligent woman with an insatiable curious streak and a desire to understand the how's and why's of new things and ideas. However, this one challenged me. I like that. I DID have to watch that middle part 3 times before I felt like I really understood the processes he was explaining. My question to satisfy my curiosity: did anyone else need to listen a few times? Or did I just let my household distractions get the best of me? 🤔😊

[@joellel3527]

I want to see your hair style

[@tcarr349]

I knew trees couldn’t be trusted! 😂

[@brfisher1123]

Weren't early tetrapod relatives already beginning to live on land by the Late Devonian?

[@yochilltfout4524]

LOL at the rip off of the how its made chime

[@florinadrian5174]

I'm not sold on the mechanism of the extinction. The algal blooms are localized and short-lived. How could they have caused and maintained a 16 million years-long extinction pressure? The change in the composition of the atmosphere, though, will do.

[@tigwhite883]

How am I supposed to take the image of a 🌲 holding a smoking gun out of my mind now?

[@kaitlynoddie9649]

step aside carcinization, it’s dendronization time

[@TaoriUTS]

a land species triggering mass extinction. now that story sounds familiar

[@The_Arcadian]

So my takeaway is humans shouldn’t feel so bad about causing mass extinction because even trees did it at least once.

[@skellybones1428]

Wait till you see candelabra trees. Now that's some weird evolution.

[@Cat_Woods]

We can calculate the probability of another mass extinction? If we are in the middle of one, doesn't that mean 100%?

[@chaosopher23]

Let's go back in time and revive a few trilobite species.

[@yanuaraidi]

1:46 this kind of creature still exist in Indonesia you know, their blood being drain by the big pharmacist company outside Indonesia

[@shank2733]

yes but they aren't trilobites. new creatures evolved

[@tygrahof9268]

Now we'll cut all the trees down and cause our own extinction due to LACK of them...

[@allegroLT]

No no no, it's the crabs that are the trees of the animal world!

[@cinemaipswich4636]

Back in the day, there were only ferns and not trees. Both could have produced oxygen via photosynthesis, but so could slime and molds.

[@SpasmFunnel]

I misread it as “Back in my day…”

[@pipe2devnull]

Don’t piss off Treebeard.

[@popguy2815]

By "species" they mean macro organisms?

[@lexiyoutube]

what is game of thrones style ...

[@Longknose7360]

Where are the fungi when you need them