Climate change could potentially have the same impact as an asteroid impact that slammed into the Earth more than 60 million years ago.

Back then it caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and life on our planet took millions of years to recover.

It was known as the ‘Great Dying’ and scientists have predicted that man-made climate change could be no less deadly.

Human-caused climate change such as air pollution, rising sea levels and habitat loss could trigger mass extinctions once more, they said in a new study.

Co-author Research Associate Dr Andrew Fraass (Corr) from the University of Bristol said: ‘From this study, it’s reasonable to infer that it’s going to take an extremely long time – millions of years – to recovery from the extinction that we’re causing through climate change and other methods.’

The T-Rex definitely didn't kiss with tongues
A vicious T-rex dinosaurs observing a falling asteroid that led to the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. (Mark Stevenson/Stocktrek Images)

The so-called ‘recovery speed limit’ has been observed across the fossil record, from the Great Dying that wiped out nearly all ocean life 252 million years ago to the massive asteroid strike that killed all non-avian dinosaurs.


Mr Fraass and US colleagues looked at the last change and they suggested that evolution could be the cause of such slow recovery, rather than environment. They studied the recovery rate of a tiny organism, planktic foraminifera which dates back to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Foram fossils are aplenty in ocean sediments which meant the researchers could closely track them without any large gaps in time.

Fiddlers Ferry powerstation in Warrington,UK
Releasing carbon into the atmosphere is not helping the situation (Getty Images)

They discovered a high level of ecological complexity, such as the development of new traits to create a new species, is needed before it can fully evolve – a process that slowed down global recovery. This explained why species took millions of years to recover even though much of the planet was technically habitable relatively soon after the Great Dying.

But the researchers said the findings have alarmingly similarities to the current escalating climate crisis and increasing habitat destruction.

Paleoceanographer Research Associate Christopher Lowery at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics said: ‘The implication should be that these same processes would be active in all other extinctions.

‘I think this is the likely explanation for the speed limit of recovery for everything.’

The delay in recovery was caused by ‘the dynamics of morphospace expansion’ – a theory that explains how species redevelop broadly and then more specially to ‘fill in the gaps.’

Mr Fraas and Mr Lowery measured the foraminifera which developed 20 million years towards the end of the extinction and recovery. The study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution is the first to use fossils to predict the future of our planet.

It's snowing more in Antarctica because of global warming Shot during an Antarctic journey
Humans are making the planet warmer and it’s going to take a long time to recover (Getty Images)

The scientists plan to use the same theory, which was supported by previous research, to assess the recovery phase from late Jurassic to the present day.


The recovery from past extinctions offers a road map for what might come after the modern ongoing extinction, which is driven by climate change, habitat loss, invasive species and other factors.
