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Study: Ancient Forest Collapse Prolonged Earth's 'Great Dying' Extinction

Published JUL 5 2025

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Above: Smoldering wildfire, California. Image credit: Unsplash

The Facts

The Permian-Triassic mass extinction — known as the Great Dying — occurred 252 million years ago and eliminated up to 94% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate families, making it Earth's most catastrophic extinction event in the past 539 million years.
USA Today
New Scientist
Nature
According to a study published in Nature Communications this week, massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia — known as the Siberian Traps — released enormous amounts of carbon dioxide over a period of 50,000 to 500,000 years, causing surface temperatures to increase by 6-10°C and triggering the mass extinction through rapid global warming.
Independent
Dailygalaxy
Tropical forests and peat bogs that previously absorbed carbon were completely wiped out across huge areas, replaced by tiny groundcover plants only 5 centimeters to 2 meters tall, creating a multimillion-year coal gap in the geological record, the study adds.
ScienceAlert
New Scientist
Super-greenhouse conditions with equatorial temperatures reaching 34°C persisted for approximately 5 million years after the volcanic activity ceased, far longer than the 100,000 years that climate models typically predict for volcanic climate disruptions.
CNN
Dailygalaxy
ScienceAlert
Researchers used fossil records from China and computer climate models to suggest that the loss of carbon-absorbing vegetation prevented atmospheric CO2 levels from declining, maintaining the prolonged warming period through reduced carbon sequestration.
PHYS
Nature
According to the study, modern tropical forests face similar risks of collapse from rapid warming, potentially creating irreversible climate tipping points where warming continues even after human emissions cease, fundamentally altering the Earth's carbon cycle for geological timescales.
Earth.com
USA Today

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The Spin

Climate-concerned narrative

This research provides crucial evidence that forest ecosystems are Earth's primary climate stabilizers. When volcanic eruptions destroyed ancient tropical forests, the planet lost its primary mechanism for absorbing carbon, which had trapped CO2 in the atmosphere for millions of years. The fossil record clearly shows how ecosystem collapse can lock Earth into prolonged warming cycles.

Nature

New Scientist

Climate-skeptic narrative

While the study offers valuable insights into past climate events, drawing direct parallels to modern conditions requires caution. Current tropical forests exhibit distinct characteristics compared to Permian vegetation, and today's continental configurations differ significantly from those of the ancient supercontinent Pangea. The timescales involved make direct comparisons challenging.

Independent