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The Permian Extinction: Good Science, Bad Assumptions by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Ninety percent of marine and 70 percent of terrestrial creatures perished suddenly in an event variously called the Permian extinction, the Permian–Triassic (P-Tr) extinction, or the Great Dying. The calamity’s cause, referred to as the K-T event, remains unknown, even though asteroid impact has been in vogue. At least, this is the account that has been repeated for several decades. Now, a recently-published study is showing that evidence of the Permian extinction is not limited to a single rock stratum.1 The whole story must be rewritten...

Around 250 million years ago, a huge volcanic eruption triggered a deadly series of events that wiped out 95% of all species on Earth. Scientists have been piecing together the story of what happened. Our planet has a troubled and turbulent past: five catastrophic natural events have caused mass extinctions of life on Earth. Perhaps the most famous one is the asteroid impact that caused the demise of the dinosaurs. But the most extensive extinction event occurred even before dinosaurs were around. In the Permian era, about 250 million years ago, a destructive volcanic eruption radically altered conditions on Earth...

No Safe Ground For Life To Stand On During World's Largest Mass Extinction The world's largest mass extinction was probably caused by poisonous volcanic gas, according to research published today.

Global warming led to atmospheric hydrogen sulfide and permian extinction Tuesday, February 22, 2005 Washington, D.C. -– Volcanic eruptions in Siberia 251 million years ago may have started a cascade of events leading to high hydrogen sulfide levels in the oceans and atmosphere and precipitating the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a Penn State geoscientist. "The recent dating of the Siberian trap volcanoes to be contemporaneous with the end-Permian extinction suggests that they were the trigger for the environmental events that caused the extinctions," says Lee R. Kump, professor of geosciences. "But the warming caused by...

Nearly a quarter-billion years ago, life on Earth almost disappeared. Called the Great Dying, the precise cause of why 70-90% of all terrestrial species might become extinct, challenges geologists, paleontologists and climatologists. But according to a recent study published in Science, astrophysicists who predict meteor orbits have a say in the outcome too. -------- The "Great Dying," a time of earth's greatest number of extinctions, appears to have been caused by the impact of a large meteor, according to a research team that includes Luann Becker, a scientist with the Institute for Crustal Studies in the Department of Geology at...