Extinction – The Five Great Dyings
Extinction is the normal fate of almost every species that has ever lived — but five times in Earth's deep history, the losses spiked into catastrophe, wiping out huge fractions of all life in a geological instant. This episode explores the Big Five mass extinctions, what caused them, and the hard question of whether we're now living through a sixth.
You'll come away understanding the difference between everyday extinction and a mass extinction, what drove the great dyings of the past, why the end-Permian event nearly ended life altogether, and how scientists weigh the evidence about today…
The skinny
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