The Great Dying Extinction Event - Siberian Traps Slab

This specimen is a basalt slab from the Kuznetsk Basin in southwestern Siberia. The Kuznetsk Basin is also home to one of the largest coal deposits on earth, a remnant of the global destruction caused by the Siberian Traps during the greatest extinction event in the history of the planet. The specimen comes inside a classic, glass-topped riker display case measuring 4 1/2" x 3 1/2". A small information card is also enclosed.

More About The Great Dying

""La vie a souvent été troublée sur cette terre par des événemens effroyables."

"Life has often been disturbed on this earth by frightful events."

~ Georges Cuvier, Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe (1822)

Known as "The Great Dying," the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event is the largest extinction event in the history of the planet. While studies point to several factors, 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). Carbon dioxide and methane releases triggered by the Siberian Traps caused runaway global warming, driving ocean temperatures to exceed 40C (104F) and killing nearly 95% of life on Earth.