History
Permian Extinction Killed 95 Percent of Species Before Dinosaurs Emerged
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The mass extinction that accidentally created the dinosaurs | Steve Brusatte
"These enormous fissures in the Earth. It's like the Earth was slashed with a giant machete and it bled lava for millions of years. And as that lava came up through those cracks in the Earth, it burnt its way through all the rocks. And that released unholy amounts of carbon dioxide and methane and other greenhouse gases that warmed the atmosphere, led to runaway global warming and that caused an extinction, and not just any extinction, but the granddaddy of all mass extinctions, 90 or 95% of all species died out."
Steve Brusatte describes the end-Permian extinction 250 million years ago, the worst mass extinction in Earth's history, caused by Siberian supervolcanoes that erupted for millions of years. The resulting runaway greenhouse effect killed 90-95% of all species, but among the survivors were small reptiles that would become the ancestors of dinosaurs. This catastrophic event set the stage for dinosaur evolution.
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