Timeline of a mass extinction: New evidence points to rapid collapse of Earth`s species 252 million years ago
Friday, November 18, 2011 - 09:30
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Since the first organisms appeared on Earth approximately 3.8 billion years ago, life on the planet has had some close calls. In the last 500 million years, Earth has undergone five mass extinctions, including the event 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs. And while most scientists agree that a giant asteroid was responsible for that extinction, theres much less consensus on what caused an even more devastating extinction more than 185 million years earlier.