A Palaeozoic whodunnit

摘要

Science is about being wrong as much as it is about being right. Thirteen years ago, Douglas Erwin wrote in his book The Great Paleozoic Crisis (Columbia University Press, 1993) that the extinction event at the Permo-Triassic boundary (PTB) 250 million years ago had lasted for as long as 10 million years and had many causes: volcanic eruptions, anoxia, acid rain, climate change, massive methane release from the ocean floor, and perhaps even meteorite impact. He termed this idea the 'Murder on the Orient Express' model, after Agatha Christie's mystery of the same name, in which it turned out that all 12 passengers in the train had contributed to the murder of the American millionaire Mr Ratchett.