Extinction event
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An extinction event is a widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp fall in the diversity and abundance of multicellular organisms. It occurs wh
Trilobites were highly successful marine animals through much of the Paleozoic, only to succumb to extinction at the Permian–Triassic extinction event
Badlands near Drumheller, Alberta, where erosion has exposed the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary.
Luis (left) and Walter Alvarez (right) at the K-Pg boundary in Gubbio, Italy in 1981. This team discovered geological evidence for an asteroid impact causing the K-Pg extinction, spurring a wave of public and scientific interest in mass extinctions and their causes
An artist's rendering of an asteroid a few kilometers across colliding with the Earth. Such an impact can release the equivalent energy of several million nuclear weapons detonating simultaneously.
The Permian–Triassic extinction event, colloquially known as the Great Dying, was an extinction event that occurred around the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, and with them
Extinction event
…to be statistically significant. Regardless, later studies have affirmed the strong ecological impacts of the Kellwasser and Hangenberg Events. The End Permian extinction, or the "Great Dying", occurred at the Permian–Triassic transition. It was the Phanerozoic Eon's largest extinction: 53% of marine families died, 84…
Permian–Triassic boundary at Frazer Beach in New South Wales, with the End Permian extinction event located just above the coal layer
Shell bed with the bivalve Claraia clarai, a common early Triassic disaster taxon
Sessile filter feeders like this Carboniferous crinoid, the mushroom crinoid (Agaricocrinus americanus), were significantly less abundant after the P–Tr extinction.
Lystrosaurus was by far the most abundant early Triassic land vertebrate.