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Scientists believe they’ve discovered a sixth mass extinction on Earth.
Experts at China’s Nanjing University, together with New York University’s Department of Biology, believe a volcanic eruption devastated the planet during the Middle Permian period.
This took place in south Asian, near Burma, some 260million years ago and potentially raises the total number of extinctions in the geologic record.
Previously, historians believed there were five geological eras defined by extinction: the Ordovician, the Late Devonian, the Permian, the Triassic and the Cretaceous.
The first of these, around 540 million years ago, was probably the second most severe. Virtually all life was in the sea at the time and around 85 per cent of these species vanished.
The most recent happened when an asteroid slammed down on Earth 66 million years ago, and is often blamed for ending the reign of the dinosaurs.
However, a previously-unknown eruption is thought to have taken place between these two chronological markers.
‘It is crucial that we know the number of severe mass extinctions and their timing in order to investigate their causes,’ explains Michael Rampino, a professor in New York University’s Department of Biology said in journal Historical Biology.
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