Scientists Examine Dates and Rates of Earth's Extinctions

A team of researchers belonging to China and North America have published a report that analyses the dates and rates of main/huge extinctions on earth.

"This is the first paper to provide rates of such massive extinction," says Dr. Charles Henderson, professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Calgary and co-author of the paper: Calibrating the end-Permian mass extinction. "Our information narrows down the possibilities of what triggered the massive extinction and any potential kill mechanism must coincide with this time."

Researched analysed various types of dating techniques on well-preserved sedimentary sections from South China to Tibet and found out that mass extinction peaked about 252.28 million years ago and lasted less than 200,000 years, with most of the extinction lasting about 20,000 years.


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