Discovery of a new mass extinction

Summary of major extinction events through time, highlighting the new, Carnian Pluvial Episode at 233 million years ago. D. Bonadonna/ MUSE, Trento. September 2020 It's not often a new mass extinction is identified; after all, such events were so devastating they really stand out in the fossil record. In a new paper, published today in Science Advances , an international team has identified a major extinction of life 233 million years ago that triggered the dinosaur takeover of the world. The crisis has been called the Carnian Pluvial Episode. The team of 17 researchers, led by Jacopo Dal Corso of the China University of Geosciences at Wuhan and Mike Benton of the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences , reviewed all the geological and palaeontological evidence and determined what had happened. The cause was most likely massive volcanic eruptions in the Wrangellia Province of western Canada, where huge volumes of volcanic basalt was poured out and forms much of the western coast of North America.