The link between the Permian–Triassic mass extinction (252 million years ago) and emplacement of Siberian Traps Large Igneous Province (STLIP) was first proposed in 1990s. However, complex cascade volcanically driven environmental biological events that led to largest known remains challenging reconstruct. In this Review, we critically evaluate geological evidence discuss current hypotheses sur...

Plants have a long evolutionary history, during which mass extinction events dramatically affected Earth's ecosystems and its biodiversity. The fossil record can shed light on the diversification dynamics of plant life and reveal how changes in the origination-extinction balance have contributed to shaping the current flora. We use a novel Bayesian approach to estimate origination and extinctio...

The discipline-wide effort to database the fossil record at the occurrence level has made it possible to estimate marine invertebrate extinction and origination rates with much greater accuracy. The new data show that two biotic mechanisms have hastened recoveries from mass extinctions and confined diversity to a relatively narrow range over the past 500 million years (Myr). First, a drop in di...