Latest Permian–Triassic extinction event Stories

By Robert S. Boyd / McClatchy Newspapers It was the greatest mass murder of all time - poison everywhere, billions slain - but the killers have never been positively identified. An estimated 95 percent of marine species and 85 percent of land creatures died, said Peter Ward, a paleobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Scientists call it "The Great Dying." Life took millions of years to recover. Scientific sleuths now think they're making progress toward learning...

The full recovery of ecological systems, following the most devastating extinction event of all time, took at least 30 million years, according to new research from the University of Bristol. About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian, a major extinction event killed over 90 per cent of life on earth, including insects, plants, marine animals, amphibians, and reptiles. Ecosystems were destroyed worldwide, communities were restructured and organisms were left struggling to recover....

The full recovery of ecological systems, following the most devastating extinction event of all time, took at least 30 million years, according to new research from the University of Bristol. About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian, a major extinction event killed over 90 per cent of life on earth, including insects, plants, marine animals, amphibians, and reptiles. Ecosystems were destroyed worldwide, communities were restructured and organisms were left struggling to recover....

We all know the story - dinosaurs were supposedly wiped out by an asteroid over 65million years ago. However, it is now being suggested that it could have been disease-spreading mosquitoes and other biting insects that lead to their demise. Husband and wife team George and Roberta Poinar from Oregon State University suggest that disease spread by mosquitoes, mites and ticks was probably the major factor that finished off the reptiles. By changing the nature of plant life, these insects could...

The Great Dying 250 million years ago happened slowly, according to USC geologistsUSC -- The greatest mass extinction in Earth's history also may have been one of the slowest, according to a study that casts further doubt on the extinction-by-meteor theory. Creeping environmental stress fueled by volcanic eruptions and global warming was the likely cause of the Great Dying 250 million years ago, said USC doctoral student Catherine Powers. Writing in the November issue of the journal Geology,...

By Whitty, Julia WE AWAKE IN OUR TENTS in the moonlight to what sounds like a dance troupe in wooden clogs practicing on rock under stunted juniper trees. It's a half-dozen Carmen mountain white-tailed deer, scraping at the ground with bootlike hooves, bending gracile necks to chew on wet soil and lick it dry. They're harvesting the minerals and moisture from our urine soaked into the parched earth of the high desert, the herd toiling through the night and into the morning in a pursuit...

The earth experienced its biggest mass extinction about 250 million years ago, an event that wiped out an estimated 95% of marine species and 70% of land species. New research shows that this mass extinction did more than eliminate species: it fundamentally changed the basic ecology of the world's oceans. Ecologically simple marine communities were largely displaced by complex communities. Furthermore, this apparently abrupt shift set a new pattern that has continued ever since. It reflects...

The world's largest mass extinction was probably caused by poisonous volcanic gas, according to research published today.The research, published in the journal Geology, reveals vital clues about the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago, when mammal-like reptiles known as synapsids roamed the earth. Many scientists had previously thought that an asteroid hitting the earth or a deep-sea methane release had caused the extinction, which obliterated more than...

British researchers have hit on a clever way to search for ancient ozone holes and their relationship to mass extinctions: measure the remains of ultraviolet-B absorbing pigments ancient plants left in their fossilized spores and pollen. To develop the approach, researcher Barry Lomax and his colleagues at the University of Sheffield and other leading UK institutions analyzed spores held in the British Antarctic Survey's collection from South Georgia Island, a UK territory in the far...

Blacksburg, Va. - A study of fossils from the Paleozoic Era, collected across the world, reveals that ancient brachiopods were little bothered by predators. However, the rare predation traces left on brachiopod shells by unknown assailants coupled with a subtle increase in their frequency through time may be the shadows on the wall that show killers were in the room and their numbers increased with time. From 550 million years ago until 250 million years ago, brachiopods, or...