Some 250 million years ago, a biological catastrophe struck Earth. An estimated 75 percent of all land-living species and up to 95 percent of all ocean-dwelling species disappeared forever in a geologically brief pulse of mass extinction. And it probably occurred in less than 160,000 years--perhaps as little as 10,000 years. That is equivalent to less than a second if Earths entire history were compressed into a single day.

The mass extinction at the end of the Permian geological period was the worst such event Earth has ever endured. It was far worse than the better-known extinction 65 million years ago that ended the dinosaur era. Imagine that 99 out of every 100 people you know suddenly died. Now imagine that entire families of animals, not just individual species, suddenly disappeared: no more rabbits, no more bats, no more horses. The Great Dying, as some call the end-Permian extinction, was the biggest population crash in evolutionary history.

Scientists have long......

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Title: Baptistina's Terrible Daughters
Approximate Word Count: 1933
Approximate Pages: 8 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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