Biggest of Mass Extinctions Looking Even Worse
Science · 2011
The most detailed look yet at events at the end of the Permian Period 252 million years ago confirms a link between the biggest and baddest of eruptions and the most massive of extinctions. Paleontologist Shu-zhong Shen of Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China and his co-authors intensively sampled the fossil records at nine sites across South China and dated 300 mineral grains using the radioactive decay of uranium to lead.