The Putorana plateau in Siberia was formed from tectonic activity Mindon Pictures/Alamy
The largest known mass extinction may have been triggered by events deep inside Earth.
Hundreds of millions of聽years聽ago, when the continents collided to form a聽single supercontinent, huge聽amounts of material may聽have聽detached from聽their undersides, causing hot molten rock to rise up and trigger enormous volcanic eruptions.
There is strong evidence that massive volcanic eruptions were responsible for the Permian extinction 252聽million years ago, which wiped out at least 80 per cent of species. These eruptions heated up the climate and caused the oceans…
