Here’s a fascinating new hypothesis: the reasons there are big die-offs every 62M years is because the solar system wobbles too far up in the orbital plane of the galaxy, exposing Earth to nasty radiation. Biodiversity drops by 10% like clockwork, and has for the last half-billion years. A cluster of galaxies nearby emit muons, damaging DNA. I can understand why it would have taken a bit to put the pieces of this puzzle together — how often do astronomers and biologists get together? As geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously said, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”
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I think I have heard of this before . . .
ummmm, when exactly was the last die off?
61,999,999 years ago?
Well, it’s not exactly “like clockwork” and there are extinction events off pattern as well: enough to make this still be a pretty open question.
Good gravy! That’s more than enough to penetrate the hide-bound tomes and tin-foil hats over at the Federalist Society. I’m not sure they can sustain much more mutation.