The end-Permian extinction devastated the oceans before dinosaurs existed. Its link to the Siberian Traps depends on not just immense lava volumes, but magma heating volatile-rich rock.
The worst mass extinction in Earth’s history struck 252 million years ago, before dinosaurs had even appeared: eruptions in what is now Siberia produced millions of cubic kilometres of basalt—enough, at the highest estimates, to bury the continental United States nearly a kilometre deep—and wiped out as many as 90 percent of marine species.
Natural History