- The mass extinction that killed nearly 70 percent of the Earth's land animals 252 million years ago may have played out at different times on land and in the sea, according to the study of fossils from South Africa and Australia.
- The study found new ages for fossilised vertebrates that lived just after the demise of the fauna that dominated the late Permian era 299 to 251 million years ago.
- The scientists believe that global changes such as a warming climate, a rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and an increase in ocean acidification may have occurred around the end of the Permian period, and the beginning of the Triassic and likely contributed to the extinction.