US EditionThe ‘Great Dying’ Wiped Out 90% of Life, Then Came 5 Million Years of Lethal Heat. New Fossils Explain Why
- Around 252 million years ago, the Great Dying wiped out approximately 90% of life on Earth.
- This event was caused by volcanic activity in the Siberian Traps, leading to intense global warming and the collapse of ecosystems.
- The absence of forests negatively impacted oxygen-carbon cycles, as noted by Michael Benton.
- Research warns that rapid global warming could lead to the collapse of current rainforests, which may worsen climate conditions.
18 Articles
18 Articles
When rainforests died, the planet caught fire: New clues from Earth’s greatest extinction
When Siberian volcanoes kicked off the Great Dying, the real climate villain turned out to be the rainforests themselves: once they collapsed, Earth’s biggest carbon sponge vanished, CO₂ rocketed, and a five-million-year heatwave followed. Fossils from China and clever climate models now link that botanical wipe-out to runaway warming, hinting that losing today’s tropical forests could lock us in a furnace we can’t easily cool.
Early Triassic super-greenhouse climate driven by vegetation collapse
The Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME), the most severe crisis of the Phanerozoic, has been attributed to intense global warming triggered by Siberian Traps volcanism. However, it remains unclear why super-greenhouse conditions persisted for around five million years after the volcanic episode, with one possibility being that the slow recovery of plants limited carbon sequestration. Here we use fossil occurrences and lithological indicators…
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