The remote locale that shielded plants during Earth’s biggest mass extinction
During a cataclysmic mass extinction event, there are typically not many places to hide. However, a region of the mountainous Turpan-Hami Basin in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in Western China may have been an oasis for some living organisms during the planet’s largest mass extinction. The spot may have served as a refugium–or life oasis–for terrestrial plants during the end-Permian mass extinction, when 80 to 90 percent of life on Earth was wiped out about 252 million years ago. These new findings are detailed in a study published March 12 in the journal Science Advances and challenges some of the views that land-based ecosystems saw the same major losses as marine environments during this incredibly turbulent time in our planet’s natural history. Great Dying debates During the end-Permian mass extinction––also called the Great Dying–80 percent of marine species were wiped out. While most species on land did not fare much better, the scope...
