A study recently published in the journal <em>Science</em> puts a time period on the eruptions that is far more concrete than any estimate thus far.
A panel of evolutionary biologists during Ithaca Darwin Days reflects on what we can learn about species invasions from the fossil record.Are human-facilitated invasions today the same kinds of events as Earth-facilitated changes in species distributions in the distant past? Are all species invasions “destructive”? Does invasion shut down speciation? Do we really know what the rate of invasion was in the past? In most instances, we simply don’t know.
"We damn near went extinct."
The discovery challenges the widely held assumption that a period of explosive evolution quickly follows for survivors of mass extinctions.