Life in the sea found its fate in a paroxysm of extinction

New York Times: It may never be as well known as the Cretaceous extinction, the one that killed off the dinosaurs. Yet the much earlier Permian extinction — 252 million years ago — was by far the most catastrophic of the planet's five known paroxysms of species loss. No wonder it is called the Great Dying: Scientists calculate that about 95 percent of marine species, and an uncountable but probably comparable percentage of land species, went extinct in a geological heartbeat. The cause or causes of the Permian...

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/science/new-studies-of-permian-extinction-shed-light-on-the-great-dying.html
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