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Extinction

Permian–Triassic extinction event

2519 BC

The Great Dying wasn’t gradual — it was a 60,000-year cascade ignited by Siberia’s volcanoes.

Worth your time?4.5/5Yes.See the whole thing.What works, what does not, who it is for ↓
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Read the brief

The Permian–Triassic extinction event is the most severe known extinction, eliminating 81% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates around 251.9 mya. Its cause is firmly tied to Siberian Traps volcanism, which altered atmospheric and ocean chemistry on a planetary scale. High-resolution dating from Meishan, China, gives it unmatched temporal precision. It does not address non-vertebrate life or resolve pulse count definitively. It changed the course of evolutionary history by ending the Paleozoic. It is essential for deep-time Earth system science — not for understanding present-day conservation.

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Chapters & takeaways5
  1. 1:12
    When

    It happened once, at a precise boundary: 251.941–251.880 mya.

  2. 2:11
    How much

    It killed more than any other known event: 81% of marine species, 70% of terrestrial vertebrates.

  3. 3:35
    How

    Siberian Traps volcanism spiked CO₂ from 400 ppm to 2,500 ppm and poisoned oceans with sulfur and acidity.

  4. 4:48
    How we know

    Meishan’s ash beds let scientists date it to the millennium; δ¹³C drops mark it where clocks fail.

  5. 6:21
    How fast

    It struck in one to three pulses — not a single blow — with the main marine die-off compressed into ≤100,000 years.

2 more chaptersFewer chapters
Worth your time?

Yes. See the whole thing.

4.5/ 5
What works
  • links volcanism to extinction via CO₂, SO₂, euxinia, and acidification
  • uses Meishan zircons for millennial-scale timing
  • employs δ¹³C as a global boundary marker
What does not
  • explain insect or plant extinction
  • quantify non-vertebrate losses
  • confirm exact number of pulses
See it if
  • stratigraphers
  • palaeoclimatologists
  • igneous petrologists
Skip it if
  • conservation biologists
  • ecologists studying living systems
  • policy makers
Who should see it, and who should skipHide who it is for
The written brief1 min read

What the species is and where it came from

It is an extinction event — not a species — occurring at the Permian–Triassic boundary, ~251.9 mya. It originated from geologically synchronous volcanic activity across Siberia.

How it works, in terms someone would actually use

It works by releasing vast quantities of CO₂ and SO₂ from flood basalt eruptions in the Siberian Traps, triggering ocean acidification, euxinia, and global warming.

What it gets right

It correctly identifies the Siberian Traps as the primary driver. It anchors the event to 251.902 mya using U–Pb zircon dates from Meishan. It ties the δ¹³C excursion to the boundary where radiometric dating fails.

What it does not

It does not explain the fate of insects, plants, fungi, or non-vertebrate terrestrial life. It does not quantify extinction in those groups. It does not resolve whether pulses were one, two, or three — only that evidence supports one to three.

What it changed

It reset terrestrial vertebrate and marine ecosystems: 70% of terrestrial vertebrates and 81% of marine species disappeared. It marked the end of the Paleozoic and start of the Mesozoic.

Who it is for, and who it is not

It is for geologists, palaeoclimatologists, and stratigraphers who work with carbon isotopes or high-resolution zircon dating. It is not for ecologists studying modern biodiversity loss, nor for conservation practitioners.

Is it worth your time

Yes — it is the only extinction event with millennial-scale resolution from U–Pb zircon dating at Meishan, China, making its timing and environmental links uniquely testable.

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Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event6600 BCThe Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was a sudden, global geophysical shock—not a slow decline. Its evidence is physical, layered, and measurable: iridium, granite, gypsum absence, acidified oceans. It changed nothing about evolution’s rules—but everything about which lineages got to play by them.
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Batrachochytrium dendrobatidisBatrachochytrium dendrobatidis is a chytrid fungus that causes chytridiomycosis in amphibians. It infects keratinized skin. It disrupts osmotic regulation. This leads to cardiac arrest. Its zoospores are motile, chemotactic, and travel one to two centimetres. It thrives between 4–25 °C. Growth halts above 28 °C. It is found worldwide—from lowland forests to cold mountain tops. It has devastated amphibian populations since its 1998 discovery. It contributed to extinctions in the Holocene extinction. Some amphibians resist infection via symbiosis with Janthinobacterium lividum. Surviving populations may reflect evolutionary selection. It also infects crayfish—but not mosquitofish.
9:54
Extinction eventAn extinction event is a statistically defined pattern in the fossil record—not a story, not a crisis, not a moral turning point. It is a measurable drop in multicellular diversity, calibrated against background rates and speciation, anchored in taxonomic loss at genus or family level. Sepkoski and Raup (1982) gave it operational rigour. Today, that same method detects a sixth event—anthropogenic, ongoing, and already exceeding background extinction by over 1,000 times.
10:18
Holocene extinctionThe Holocene extinction is not a species, era, or completed event. It is the empirically observed acceleration of species loss — 100–1,000× background rates — driven by human systems. It names causes, cites consensus, and rejects natural explanation. It stops where evidence stops: before declaring mass extinction status, before assigning totals, before fixing dates.
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