When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time

The author hangs on to too much specialized knowledge and vocabulary for this to be interesting enough for general readers.

I was looking forward to a being led by an expert into a new area of knowledge related to geologic timescales. But I couldn't find much of the excitement that you often find in equivalent popularized science discussions by experts in astronomy or physics for example.

I think the potential is there, but this was not the author for it. The author however is clearly capable, competent, well-informed.

If you remember the times when the neighbor kid went on for hours about his rock collection and you liked it, this book is for you.

Meanwhile, I'm still looking for the author who will open the door for me to geology and other like topics.

The earth has been visited by no less than five massive extinctions of life during its nearly one billion years of recorded life. In WHEN LIFE NEARLY DIED, Michael Benton describes in terms that an educated layman can grasp of the processes behind such a troublesome concept. Benton divides such extinctions into three types: minor, intermediate, and major. His book title implies that the thrust of his interest will be with one that was the largest, the one that closed out the Permian, nearly 250 million years ago. Yet, most of his focus is on an overview of the development of the controversy between catastrophism versus steady statism as to which one better clarifies the whys and hows of the growth and near death of life on this planet. Had Benton added an "s" after "extinction" to his subtitle: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, then he would have placed his text on a firmer footing. But I quibble. What he has accomplished is a well-researched and eminently readable account of what mass extinction means, how it could have come about, and how our planet possessed the resiliency to repopulate itself, even after the colossal near extinction of life at the end of the Permian. The first ten chapters prepare the reader for the biggest, baddest ruination of life that ever struck Earth. Benton spends considerable time in assessing the damage of a one time event--like the asteroid that slammed into this planet and wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. He notes that as bad as that one was--and it was plenty bad--that life reinvented itself in an amazingly short period of time. But it was the one that occurred 250 million years ago that proved the most interesting and paradoxically the least known mass extinction. Benton had the great good fortune to possess the most recent geological evidence that pointed a firm finger of blame at the Siberian Traps. These Traps were massive volcanoes that began to erupt more or less simultaneously and continued to do so for approximately ten thousand years. As these Traps began to erupt, they emitted a witches' brew of obnoxious sulphur dioxide gas that settled slowly around the globe. The consequences of these eruptions were a combination of greenhouse gases and warming in some parts of the earth, global cooling in others, acid rain nearly everywhere, and most pernicious of all a life deadening increase of global anoxia, a loss of oxygen that wiped out nearly ninty percent of terrestrial and oceanic life. Benton personalizes this impossibly complex series of geological crises by zeroing in on how these crises affected a family of Diocynodons, a reptilian ancestor of the dinosaurs. The Diocynodons are hungry, which is no surprise since their food supply has steadily eroded since the Traps began to eradicate the world's food supply millenia ago. They are also finding it increasingly difficult to breathe, again no surprise since the amount of breathable oxygen has also plummeted. The rain that covers the blighted landscape is acidic. The food chain from the smallest plankton to the biggest predator has collapsed. Only the lucky few life forms that can withstand these pummeling blows survive. But the Diocynodons, like the vast majority of earth's creatures, cannot. They die, and life on earth needs more than one hundred million years to rediversify to include the later dinosaurs who will rule until they in turn are wiped out by an asteroid slamming into the Earth 65 million years ago. And so the process continues until today. Benton closes with a timely warning that we are very much like the proud, if unthinking dinosaurs who think that yesterday will be like today, and today like tomorrow. WHEN LIFE NEARLY DIED is a much needed wake up call to shake us out of that fatal complacency.

The best book yet written on the Permian extinction, "When Life Nearly Died" explores all of the possible mechanisms, and then provides the only quantifiable theory ever put forward. Benton's description and data on a rapid global warming followed by an enormous polar methane release of multi-billion tonnage is actually supported by some math that looks sound.

The meteor theory of the Permian extinction is unequivocally dismantled and others like continental drift are given deft handling. The relevance of the Permian extinction is startling to us now. If we warm the planet too much more, a huge gaseous release could erupt from beneath the oceans and wipe out 90% of all life.

This book is more about geology and how geologic standards were created than it was about the greatest mass extinction. MAYBE 20% of this book was information on the Permian mass extinction. But still worth the read, especially if you're into geology.

This is a masterfully written book on a little-known topic, the Permian "event" that caused the extinction of perhaps 90% of terrestrial and marine metazoa 251 million years ago. And what was that "event"? The author, Michael J. Benton, comes down on the side of the "Siberian Traps" a long episode of volcanism in what is now Siberia. I was sort of cheering for the asteroid, but we must go where the evidence leads, and it leads toward the traps. This is the best and most comprehensive book I have encountered on the subject of the Permian extinction. Much of the research the author cites is very recent and the work is still being conducted. Stay tuned.

Have you ever read a book that solves a problem you never knew existed and then felt enormously better for having learned about it. And then, not only did the book cover the main problem, but got you to the problem in a gentle, all encompassing way. WHEN LIFE NEARLY DIED is that book. Did you know there were five big extinction events in the course of our planet's life? This book discusses the prevailing mindsets of the people that worked toward discovering the reasons behind the biggest of them all. Highly recommended... - lc

*When Life Nearly Died* -- what a title! -- is a highly readable account for the interested layperson about the nature of mass extinctions, the development of the science and scientists that led to the recognition of mass extinctions, and the particular clues and kinds of clues that aid studies of mass extinctions. The author, Michael Benton, emphasizes the greatest known of these mass extinctions, the end-Permian event 251 million years ago, when 90-95% of all species died -- plant and animal, on land and in lakes and seas. Benton also discusses other mass extinctions, especially the very famous but less deadly end-Cretaceous mass extinction 65 million years ago (think "dinosaurs") and the lessons learned from studying it. He has his preferred candidate cause for the end-Permian extinction, one that may surprise the reader, and he makes a good case for it.

For a layperson's account of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, try James Lawrence Powell's *Night Comes to the Cretaceous: Dinosaur Extinction and the Transformation of Modern Geology*, another great-titled and highly readable book.

This book covers the historical, intellectual and factual context of attempts to understand the transition from the Permian to the Triassic. It does so in an entertaining way, and I have had difficulty putting it down. The important interplay between geology and paleontology is very well explained. What I find most satisfying about this book is that it really describes the process of discovery in a most wonderful way. Whether or not some parts have since become out of date is not particularly important. The interested reader will have been brought to a level where he or she can easily find out more for themselves, and I think this gives this book a value which will not diminish with time.

Very interesting discussion of the Permian extinction

A seminal book on the Permian extinction; a must read for anyone interested in evolution or paleontology.