As a result of the so-called Paleocene-Eocene warming, modern mammals have appeared. It turned out that climate change could occur due to the fact that the planet’s orbit became a little more elongated.

On our planet, periods and eras of warming and cooling alternate. With the climatic maximum, the temperature of the planet became higher. In the era of glaciation, most of the planet’s area was covered with ice and snow.

About 55 million years ago, the Paleocene-Eocene temperature maximum occurred. Its growth within the limits of the whole planet ranged from 5 to 8 degrees. Due to such drastic climatic changes, the Earth completely got rid of the polar caps. Zones of moist equatorial forests advanced far north and south from the equator.

Such severe climate change has led to global extinction. Instead of extinct species, mammals began to spread.

Rapid climate change has occurred in just a few years. The causes of global change remain unknown today. In a very short period of time, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the main greenhouse gas, increased to 3%.

According to paleoclimatologists who published a new article in the journal Science, catastrophic warming was not associated with a sharp increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air.It happened as a result of changes in the motion of the earth's orbit.

Its elongation changes, undergoes oscillation cycles. They change at different intervals. The large elongation of the orbit leads to the fact that more solar heat enters the surface of the planet. Just such a situation occurred about 55 million years ago. At the same time, she herself was warmer. The imposition of these factors led to an intensive increase in global temperature over a relatively short period of time.

Perhaps climate change was due to the melting of crystalline hydrates located at the bottom of the oceans. As a result of melting, methane was released from them - an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Large amounts of methane triggered irreversible changes in the atmosphere until a climate catastrophe occurred. Why crystalline hydrates began to thaw intensively is still unknown.