The Place Connected to Earth's Greatest Extinction
How the remote Putorana Plateau is connected to the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history.
I saw photographs of the Putorana Plateau in Siberia: huge terraced mountains, lakes and waterfalls. Then I learned that these mountains are connected to the largest mass extinction in Earth's history.
I wanted to understand how volcanic eruptions could have caused most marine species to disappear.
What does the Putorana Plateau have to do with it?
Putorana is a remote region in northern Krasnoyarsk Krai. The photos show steep cliffs and lakes tucked between the mountains.
Their distinctive steps formed from ancient lava flows that cooled and hardened in layers. Lava is magma — molten rock from inside Earth — that has reached the surface.
Putorana is part of an enormous volcanic region known as the Siberian Traps.
About 252 million years ago, enormous eruptions took place across Siberia. Lava spread over vast areas, while magma pushed into rocks underground. This happened around the time of the end-Permian mass extinction.
How bad was the extinction?
This catastrophe was even more severe than the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
One modern estimate suggests that about 81% of marine species disappeared. Many land animals and plants died out too. Trilobites — marine arthropods that had existed for hundreds of millions of years — disappeared completely.
Dinosaurs hadn't evolved yet. Among the land predators was Inostrancevia, a large, long-fanged animal that lived in what is now Russia.
How could volcanoes kill so much life?
Lava destroyed life near the eruptions, but couldn't reach every ocean. The bigger danger came from gases released by eruptions and by magma heating underground rocks.
One of these gases was carbon dioxide (CO₂). It strengthens the greenhouse effect: more heat stays in Earth's climate system, and the planet warms.
That triggered a chain of changes:
- Temperatures rose, making many habitats difficult to survive in.
- Oceans warmed. Warm water holds less dissolved oxygen, which most marine animals need.
- Extra CO₂ contributed to ocean acidification, making it harder for some organisms to build shells and skeletons.
- Food chains broke down as species disappeared and other animals lost their food sources.
This wasn't one explosion that killed everything in a day. Volcanic activity continued for a long time, and environmental changes built up.
So was Putorana the place where it all began?
Putorana wasn't one giant volcano that exploded and wiped out life. It's part of a much larger region that preserves traces of ancient eruptions.
How do scientists know the events were connected? They date rocks using radioactive decay, examine fossils in successive layers and study chemical evidence of changes in ancient climates and oceans.
This shows that the largest mass extinction happened around the same geological time as the Siberian Traps eruptions. The connection is strongly supported, although researchers are still studying the details.
So the mountains of Putorana contain rocks formed during one of the worst crises in the history of life. Now I'd like to see them for myself.