In a groundbreaking study, new fossil evidence has shed light on the mysterious 5-million-year heatwave that followed Earth’s ...

Therapsids, the ancient relatives of mammals, once roamed Earth in great numbers during the middle to late Permian period. These land-dwelling creatures would later evolve into mammals, but their ...

Long before the dinosaurs, the Permian period was a brutal time to be alive. In this video, we explore the strange creatures, harsh environments, and the massive extinction event that made the ...

A cataclysm engulfed the planet some 252 million years ago, wiping out more than 90% of all life. Known as the Great Dying, the mass extinction that ended the Permian geological period was the ...

Life flourished in the Permian period (298.9 million to 251.9 million years ago). The supercontinent Pangaea was ringed with lush forests where odd reptiles ranged alongside amphibians and ...

Known as the Great Dying, the mass extinction that ended the Permian geological period was the worst of the five global catastrophic events in Earth’s history, more devastating, than the one ...

More information: Wenwei Guo et al, Rapid riparian ecosystem recovery in low-latitudinal North China following the end-Permian mass extinction, eLife (2025). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.104205.1 ...

The biggest mass extinction of all time happened 251 million years ago, at the Permian-Triassic boundary. Virtually all of life was wiped out, but the pattern of how life was killed off on land ...

The West Texas desert has a surprising feature: a prehistoric ocean reef. There is a surprising natural wonder in the middle of the vast West Texas desert: a prehistoric ocean reef built from the ...

The end-Permian mass extinction, which occurred approximately 252 million years ago, wiped out over 80% of marine species, and its impact on land has long been debated.

The Permian extinction saw the loss of 80 to 96 percent of all marine species. In the Cretaceous event, perhaps 60 to 75 percent of marine species disappeared. What caused these immense die-offs?