Always found it interesting that when the average person thinks "mass extinction event" they think asteroid ☄️ even though that was actually a weird one and the others were climatically driven from within Earth systems. "Recency" bias I guess, lol
@Formorphology Also bolide impacts are rather impressive. So the recency bias is conflated with the Ooh! Cool! bias
@Formorphology This. People would better understand the mortal danger we’re facing from climate change if people better understood what a mass extinction event was, and the reasons they take place. It’s almost always climate change.
@Formorphology Even that one was essentially climate change, just a sudden, externally-triggered, liquify-some-crust-and-turn-the-lights-out speed-run of climate change. But yes - I think too many people think along Gaia lines that Earth systems are always self-sustaining.
@Formorphology Recency, Dinosaurs, and the only one that the mass media talks about... That's a point I talk about in classes: the "we are the asteroid" concept reaches people, but anthropogenic extinctions are much more comparable to the volcanically-generated ones.
@Formorphology I think there's a historical aspect too - the dinosaur extinction was figured out at a time of US anxiety about nuclear war and the possibility of a fast end flashed with people.
@Formorphology Along with the other points in the replies, wasn't the K-Pg extinction one of the first ones that we identified a single trigger for? If so, firsts tend to make impressions
@Formorphology How many average people think about mass extinction events and are aware the end cretaceous wasn't the only one?
@Formorphology when i think “mass extinction” i think “yellowstone supervolcano choosing to erupt on the day that i visit.” unlikely, of course but not impossible.