Paleontologist suggests 'great dying' 252 million years ago wasn't as bad as thought
Tuesday, October 4, 2016 - 08:51
in Paleontology & Archaeology
(Phys.org)—Paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Steven Stanley of the University of Hawaii has challenged the notion that the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event 252 million years ago killed off up to 96 percent of all marine life. Instead, he claims in his paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that background extinctions should account for some of that loss, and because of that, the actual extinction rate for marine life was probably closer to 81 percent.