A CLUE to the catastrophic chain of events that led to Earth’s largest-ever extinction has come from a sample of rock from the Dolomite mountains in Italy.
The Permian extinction some 250 million years ago wiped out more than 90 per cent of marine life and 70 per cent of terrestrial life. Huge volcanic eruptions in Siberia were thought to be the cause, but exactly how has remained a mystery.
Mark Sephton at Imperial College London and his colleagues discovered the remains of cellulose molecules, a building block of plants, in sedimentary rock from the Dolomites. Cellulose is eaten by…
