The common one-celled organism known as Methanosarcina seems harmless at first glance (although on closer observation, it does look kinda creepy), but experts have found new evidence suggesting microbes like these may have triggered the largest mass extinction of life on Earth – a global catastrophe so massive that scientists have nicknamed it “The Great Dying.”
According to I Fucking Love Science, MIT Professor Daniel Rothman and his team of researchers have theorized that methane production from Methanosarcina could have led to drastic shifts in global temperatures which eventually killed off 90% of all species on the planet– an event 250 million years ago known as the Permian-Triassic Extinction – and it could have taken life up to 10 million years to recover.
These microbes, which can be found all over the planet today (including in your intestines), are so efficient in producing methane gas that a certain set of geological events could have caused microbe populations to bloom and blanket the planet with the gas, raising temperatures high enough to effectively “break” the climate balance. In a sense, they may have literally farted the planet to death.
Visit I Fucking Love Science for a full breakdown of the team's findings... and while we're on the subject of micro-monsters, be sure to check out this real-life microscopic spawn of Cthulhu!