The Permian Period: The History and Legacy of the Era with the Largest Mass Extinction Event

Among the most interesting of the prehistoric eras is the Permian age, the most extreme period in the planet's history. It spanned 47 million years, beginning with an ice age, warming, and ending with the most cataclysmic volcanic episode in the planet's history. The great bulk of all life on the Earth was almost immediately snuffed out, barely crawling back over the following 10 to 30 million years, and it set the stage for the “Age of Dinosaurs.”

What is termed by some as the “Pennsylvan...