The volcanic activity was so intense, it left behind an enormous region of volcanic rock, known as the Siberian Traps, or flood basalts, from the 1.5 million cubic kilometres of lava spewed out from the volcanic fissure in Earth’s crust.
“The scale of this extinction was so incredible that scientists have often wondered what made the Siberian flood basalts so much more deadly than other similar eruptions,” said geologist Michael Broadley of the Centre for Petrographic and Geochemical Research in France.
The changes the world underwent during the Great Dying were dramatic. The planet warmed considerably, an effect usually attributed to the release of huge amounts of volcanic volatiles, such as carbon dioxide. It’s also thought that this caused the ozone layer to thin considerably, rendering plants sterile and unable to propagate.
They had been hidden inside the ground, in the outermost layer of Earth called the lithosphere, according to the team’s research.
But comparison with the 160 million-year-old xenoliths showed a sharp reduction in these halogens – suggesting that something monumental had occurred to release them from the rock. Such as a huge volcanic eruption, perhaps.
Based on the team’s calculations, up to 70 percent of the volatile content of the eruption’s plume was extracted from the lithosphere – and this, in turn, could help account for the tremendous devastation caused by the event.