Extinction level event
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An extinction level event (ELE) is an event where all species on the planet can become extinct. This is opposed to normal extinctions of just single species, which happen all the time. Things that cause extinction level events include supervolcanoes and mass climate change, which are events suspected to have happened in the past on several occasions. The most spectacular, of course, are asteroid impacts - which were popularized in the late 1990s by the movies Deep Impact and Armageddon.
[edit] Historical Extinction-level Events
The most famous — undoubtedly because it is the most recent — historical extinction would be the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs (the K-T boundary) 65 million years ago.
However, this pales in magnitude compared to the P-T extinction event, which ended the Permian period 252 million years ago. Also known as the Permian mass extinction, it resulted in the worldwide loss of 57% of all families, 83% of all genera, 96% of all marine species, and an estimated 70% of all land species.
[edit] See also
- Comet Elenin, for what happens when conspiracy theorists decide that Hollywood fiction is a deeply masked message about reality.