An artist’s rendering of the mass extinction of life that occurred toward the end of the Permian Period, about 250 million years ago.
Credit: Lynette Cook/Science Source

There was a time when life on Earth almost blinked out. The “Great Dying,” the biggest extinction the planet has ever seen, happened some 250 million years ago and was largely caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Now scientists are beginning to see alarming similarities between the Great Dying and what’s currently happening to our atmosphere.

Scientists are highlighting that similarity in a new exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

The crown jewel of the Deep Time exhibit is the museum’s first real Tyrannosaurus rex. Its skeleton stands over the bones of a prone triceratops, with one clawed foot holding down the hapless herbivore and jaws clamped onto its head, ready to take a bite the size of a manhole cover.

“We like to say, ‘Come for the dinosaurs, stay for everything else,’ ” says Scott Wing, one of the curators.

The theme of […]