251.4 million years ago, the Permian extinction event destroyed the atmosphere, wiped out almost all life on the planet, and was generally a bad time. This BP oil leak is reminding scientists of the conditions of that event just a bit too much.
There was another mass extinction event 55 million years after that, referred to as the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum, which lasted 100,000 years and was caused by an exploding methane bubble. Guess where it all went down? The ancient waters around where we now call the Gulf of Mexico.
The science behind the oceanic methane eruptions is theorized by Northwestern University's Gregory Ryskin, who postulates that oceans periodically (like millions of years periodically) produce a methane buildup of world-ending magnitude.
Scientists now worry that much more than oil is leaking out at dangerous levels, including a massive amount of methane, and the BP-imposed blackout that is keeping scientists and reporters away from the leak is only escalating fears. LINK
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