Sentence examples for biggest extinction from inspiring English sources

One of the biggest extinction events in the history of life may be unfolding.

But evidence is accumulating that the biggest extinction of all, 252.3m years back, at the end of the Permian period, was indeed also triggered by an impact.

It also refined the timing of geochemical changes, which may hold clues to exactly how the eruptions trigged the biggest extinction.

Many scientists think that a similar massive burst of volcanic activity in Siberia touched off the biggest extinction of all time, just 8 million years later, at the end of the Permian period.

Related: One of the World's Biggest Extinction Crises Is Being Caused by Cats.

Warming with acidification and deoxygenation of marine water is a signal common to the Earth's previous five biggest extinction events.

The most exciting aspect of the discovery, described in the 13 June issue of Science, is that the apparent impact would have preceded one of the five biggest extinctions ever.

"If things aren't falling dead at your feel that doesn't mean you're not in the middle of a big extinction event," he said.

Scientists estimate that the Earth is losing species 100 to 1,000 times the historical average, and they warn that that is pushing the planet toward its sixth big extinction phase, the greatest since dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago.

So some have speculated that a similar impact 251 million years ago at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods (P-T --may have triggered the even bigger extinction that gave dinosaur ancestors their start.

They survived four of the five big extinction events.