📸 An artistic interpretation of The Siberian Traps
The Great Dying: The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event
Our planet has gone through many different cycles of life and death over the last 4.5 billion years, from the rise and long-lasting reign of the dinosaurs to the endless variations of tiny cyanobacteria stretching back billions of years. While the fossil record holds a picture of many dramatic events, nothing quite compares to the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, known as "The Great Dying."
📸 A large fragment of material from the Siberian Traps
The Siberian Traps
The chief catalyst of this extinction event is a series of massive volcanic eruptions known as the Siberian Traps. Over the course of 1,000,000 years, these flood basalt eruptions covered over 7 million square kilometers (2,700,000 square miles) with as much as 4 million cubic kilometers of lava (~1,000,000 cubic miles).
Nickel released by the Siberian Traps triggered marine bacteria to produce massive amounts of methane. Combined with an injection of carbon dioxide and sulfate aerosols, runaway global warming pushed ocean temperatures over 40C (104F).
📸 A look at the devastation from so much heat, carbon dioxide, and methane.
Such devastation on land and sea is unequaled in the fossil record. Nearly 95% of all life perished, and most studies indicate life took millions of years to rebound.
As life returned, new species rose to the top. The Synapsids (mammal-like reptiles such as Dimetrodon) were replaced by Archosaurs. The Archosaurs descendants included birds, crocodilians, pterosaurs, and of course dinosaurs.
📸 The rugged terrain of Putorana Plateau on the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia, Russia is completely formed from the remains of the Siberian Traps. It lies more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away from the Kuznetsk Basin giving some sense to the massive scale of this formation.
EXTINCTION EVENTS
On an active planet such as ours, change is a constant companion: climates shift, oceans rise and fall, and continents forever churn against each other. Yet life goes on despite all that is thrown at it. It moves and reacts. Over time, life changes; sometimes in radical ways.
But even though life is very resilient, there are times when change is so rapid, widespread, or violently dramatic that it is impossible to hold out. During these times, species fall faster than new species can rise to take their place. The cycle triggers even more species to fall in a chain of extinctions. We call these moments Extinction Events, and while they appear to be blips on a chart of time, some can last millions of years and the recovery can take far longer.
While there have been numerous extinction events scattered across time, the chart to the right highlights the "Big Five" events as well as a number of smaller events that have occurred in between: Ordovician–Silurian (441,000,000), Late Devonian (359,000,000), Permian–Triassic (252,000,000), Triassic–Jurassic (201,000,000), Cretaceous–Paleogene (66,000,000).
The Great Dying Extinction Event - Siberian Traps Slab
The Great Dying Extinction Event - Siberian Traps Slab
Gondwana: When the Earth Was One
Pangaea: the Prehistoric Supercontinent
The Tethys Ocean: A Lost Prehistoric Sea
Further Reading
Davies, Clare, Mark B. Allen, Misha M. Buslov and Inna Safonova. "Deposition in the Kuznetsk Basin, Siberia : insights into the Permian-Triassic transition and the Mesozoic evolution of Central Asia." Palaeogeography, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology 295.1 (2010): 307-322. dro.dur.ac.uk. Web. 13 March 2018.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. The sixth extinction: An unnatural history. A&C Black, 2014.
Hallam, Tony. Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities : The Causes of Mass Extinctions. Oxford University Press, 2005. EBSCOhost.com. Web. 13 March 2018.
Saunders, Andy and Marc Reichow. "The Siberian Traps and the End-Permian mass extinction: a critical review." Chinese Science Bulletin 54.1 (2009): 20-37. Ira.le.ac.uk. Web. 13 March 2018.