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Earth's last magnetic flip 42,000 years brought environmental change and extinctions. Could that happen now?

Listen • 3:06 A giant Kauri tree growing in Waipoua Forest, Northland, New Zealand. Researchers have studied rings in these very old trees to discern fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic poles. An ancient, well-preserved tree that was alive the last time the Earth's magnetic poles flipped has helped scientists pin down more precise timing of that event, which occurred about 42,000 years ago. This new information has led them to link the flipping of the poles to key moments in the prehistoric record, like the sudden appearance of cave art and the mysterious extinction of ...

February 18, 2021 at 3:02 pm A flip-flop of Earth’s magnetic poles between 42,000 and 41,000 years ago briefly but dramatically shrank the magnetic field’s strength — and may have triggered a cascade of environmental crises on Earth, a new study suggests. With the help of new, precise carbon dating obtained from ancient tree fossils, the researchers correlated shifts in climate patterns, large mammal extinctions and even changes in human behavior just before and during the Laschamps excursion, a brief reversal of the magnetic poles that lasted less than a thousand years. It’s the firs...

Share Radiocarbon from a 42,000-year-old kauri tree in New Zealand helped unravel Earth’s last magnetic upheaval. JONATHAN PALMER Ancient kauri trees capture last collapse of Earth’s magnetic field Feb. 18, 2021 , 2:00 PM Several years ago, workers breaking ground for a power plant in New Zealand unearthed a record of a lost time: a 60-ton trunk from a kauri tree, the largest tree species in New Zealand. The tree, which grew 42,000 years ago, was preserved in a bog and its rings spanned 1700 years, capturing a tumultuous time when the world was turned upside down—at least magnet...

To investigate what happened, ancient New Zealand kauri trees were analysed for the study.