Today we talk about the Permian–Triassic extinction event, colloquially known as "The Great Dying" - the absolute closest life on Earth has ever come to being completely wiped out.
Long before the asteroid hit the dinosaurs, a far more devastating crisis took place 252 million years ago. It didn't happen in a single afternoon; instead, it was a prolonged, agonizing planetary collapse that ultimately erased roughly 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates from existence. In this episode, we are digging into the horrific chain reaction that triggered the ultimate apocalypse.
We’ll explore the culprit behind the chaos: the Siberian Traps, a massive complex of volcanic vents that erupted continuously for hundreds of thousands of years. We trace how these eruptions choked the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, ignited buried coal beds, and triggered a runaway greenhouse effect that literally boiled the oceans, stripped them of oxygen, and left the land a barren, acidic wasteland.
We’re examining the heavy geological scars left in the fossil record, the resilient, bizarre creatures like Lystrosaurus that somehow managed to sneak through the bottleneck of extinction, and how this total evolutionary reset button fundamentally reshaped the trajectory of our modern world.
Unearth the past with us - it’s time to explore the day the Earth nearly died.