The Ancients – "The Permian Extinction: When Life Nearly Died"

Podcast Host: Tristan Hughes (History Hit)
Guest: Professor Michael Benton
Date: September 18, 2025

Episode Overview

In this riveting installment of The Ancients, host Tristan Hughes teams up with leading paleontologist Professor Michael Benton to unpack the greatest mass extinction event in Earth's history: the Permian extinction, also known as "The Great Dying." Occurring approximately 250 million years ago, this cataclysmic event wiped out an estimated 96–97% of species. Throughout the episode, Benton expertly weaves geological evidence, paleontological discoveries, and contemporary scientific debates into a compelling account of the Permian world, the catastrophic extinction, and how the aftermath paved the way for the rise of the dinosaurs.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: The Permian World

• Complex Ecosystems Pre-Extinction
  • Land life featured enormous herbivores (pareiasaurs), saber-toothed predators (Gorgonopsians), giant insects, proto-mammals, and vast coal swamps (17:10–21:00).
  • Marine environments boasted diverse reefs with corals, sponges, ammonites, and early cephalopods, with trilobites still lingering but dwindling (25:25–28:00).
• Pangea’s Supercontinent
  • All major landmasses joined together, leading to widespread similarity in fauna and flora and allowing species to disperse across the globe (24:07).

“Pangea stretch[ed] more or less from the North Pole to the South Pole. We have to imagine a world where there is no Atlantic Ocean...”
— Professor Michael Benton [24:07]

2. The Evidence: Reading Rocks & Fossils

• Geologists reconstruct the event by examining rock layers, sediment changes, and fossil records, particularly in Russia, South Africa, and China (06:30–13:00).
• Dramatic changes in sedimentation (alluvial fans and conglomerates) correspond to a catastrophic landscape change, likely caused by global deforestation rather than just tectonic shifts (07:57–13:01).

“If you remove the plants, particularly the trees, from a landscape...you cut down the trees, then the soil is released and you’re left with a rocky slope and great amounts of sediment...”
— Professor Michael Benton [10:30]

3. The Catastrophe: What (Likely) Happened

• Scale: This extinction dwarfed all others, eliminating over 90% of species, with updated estimates reaching 96%. For context, the asteroid event that killed the dinosaurs took out about 50–60% (04:54).
• Geological Timeline: The extinction spanned two distinct crises, 60,000 years apart, devastating the ecosystem’s diversity and structure (30:19–33:17).
• Dating Advances: Modern radiometric techniques now allow dating these events to a window of merely tens of thousands of years, a huge leap from previous uncertainties (33:17–34:44).

4. The Smoking Gun: Causes of the Permian Extinction

• Siberian Traps Volcanism:
  • Huge volcanic eruptions in present-day Siberia released vast amounts of lava as well as catastrophic levels of sulfur dioxide and CO₂ over nearly a million years (34:50–46:21).
• Chain of Environmental Catastrophes:
  • Acid Rain: Rapid sulfur dioxide release created acid rain, killing forests on a global scale.
  • Global Warming: Massive CO₂ and methane emissions drove temperatures up by as much as 10°C (45:12).
  • Ocean Anoxia: Oceans lost circulation, depriving marine life of oxygen and causing black, organic-rich sediments (34:50–47:34).
  • Biodiversity Collapse: Tropical zones became uninhabitable, pushing already stressed species to the brink (45:12–47:22).

“The evidence from ocean sediments around the world is that temperatures rose by as much as 10 degrees centigrade...Just 1 degree, 10 degrees...”
— Professor Michael Benton [41:56]

“We do think that this is a generalizable model: hyperthermal crisis...the warming actually takes over and dominates.”
— Professor Michael Benton [42:05]

5. The Aftermath: Mass Death and Survival

• What Died
  • Largest terrestrial herbivores (pareiasaurs), saber-tooth predators, many plant and insect species, almost all reef builders, and most marine animal groups (51:25–53:10).
  • Trilobites, iconic survivors from earlier eras, went fully extinct (27:01).
• Estimated Loss:
  • 96% of species, confirmed by both regional fossils and global statistical methods, making it the largest extinction on record (53:18).
• Survivors & New Lineages
  • On land: Proto-mammals (cynodonts), archosaurs (future ancestors of crocodiles, birds, and dinosaurs), and resilient species like Lystrosaurus (a burrowing herbivore) (55:33–56:59).
  • At sea: Lineages that gave rise to modern crustaceans, bivalves, gastropods, and bony fishes (57:54).

“The great survivor was Lystrosaurus...it could burrow in and make itself burrows and hide away in the heat of the day and somehow survived...”
— Professor Michael Benton [56:59]

6. Recovery and Long-Term Impact

• Slow Rebuilding:
  • Earth’s biosphere took at least 10–15 million years to fully recover, with reefs and forests not reappearing until well into the Triassic (59:41–61:13).
  • The scarred, arid aftermath is often described as a "disaster fauna" landscape, with only a few adaptable species dominating before ecological diversity slowly rebuilt.
• Rise of the Dinosaurs:
  • The extinction reset life, creating ecological opportunities for the rise and diversification of dinosaurs and early mammals (59:37–59:39).

“The end Permian extinction event was highly catastrophic...but it actually triggered an amazing evolutionary response and marks a very major reset.”
— Professor Michael Benton [59:37]

7. Modern Parallels and Future Risks

• Are We Due Another Mass Extinction?
  • Mass extinction risks persist, especially from massive volcanism rather than asteroid impacts. No periodic pattern, but volcanic monitoring is key (61:19).

“We are due another mass extinction. But when is impossible to say...the main cause does seem to be volcanic eruption rather than impact.”
— Professor Michael Benton [61:19]

Notable Quotes

• On Geological Perspective:

  “To a geologist like me, [the Permian] is quite modern times.”
  — Prof. Michael Benton [05:41]

• On the Incomprehensibility of the Disaster:

  “It's like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in the six holes.”
  — Podcast Host Tristan Hughes [03:15]

• On Supervolcanoes:

  “Humans have never witnessed a global scale super, super, hyper, super volcano like this.”
  — Prof. Michael Benton [46:21]

• On Legacy:

  “The end Permian extinction event...was the biggest of all time. But it actually triggered an amazing evolutionary response.”
  — Prof. Michael Benton [59:37]

Segment Timestamps

| Topic | Start Time | Key Content | |-----------------------------------------|:----------:|-------------| | Introduction & Overview | 02:21 | Setting scene, catastrophe theme | | Permian World & Ecosystem | 13:13 | Life before the extinction | | Geology & Evidence | 06:30 | Rocks, fossils, field evidence | | The Extinction Event Details | 30:11 | Timing, dual-phase extinction | | Causes: Volcanism & Consequences | 34:44 | Siberian Traps, climate impacts | | Oxygen Loss, Anoxia in Oceans | 47:22 | Marine extinction mechanisms | | Who Died – Land and Sea | 51:12 | Main victims, accurate estimates| | Who Survived & Why | 55:17 | Lystrosaurus, proto-mammals | | Aftermath & Recovery | 59:37 | Time to recovery, evolutionary legacy | | Modern Implications | 61:13 | Future mass extinctions |

Memorable Moments

• Host Tristan Hughes expresses surprise at geologists considering "the age of dinosaurs" as modern history [06:08].
• Professor Benton’s vivid fieldwork recollections in Russia paint the geological boundary as a tangible, almost cinematic event [07:57].
• The metaphor of the ecosystem as a carefully constructed food web, stable and yet so vulnerable to dramatic change [29:02–30:11].
• The final recognition that Earth's mass extinctions are not just remote curiosities—they influence the world we inhabit and the risks we still face.

This episode expertly blends vivid storytelling, rigorous science, and ponderings on Earth's fragility. For any listener, it offers not only a window into deep time, but also a cautionary tale about how quickly life’s rich tapestry can unravel—and how, from crisis, evolution can surge anew.