Roughly 201 million years ago, the world basically fell apart. We talk a lot about the asteroid that killed the "cool" dinosaurs, but the end Triassic extinction event was a different kind of beast. It was slow. It was hot. It was suffocating. Honestly, if it hadn't happened, the Jurassic Park movies would probably feature giant crocodile-monsters instead of T-Rexes.
Life was weird back then. The Earth wasn't a collection of separate continents yet; it was one giant landmass called Pangea. Imagine walking from what is now New Jersey to Morocco without hitting an ocean. That’s the world that got wrecked.
The end Triassic extinction event wiped out about 76% of all marine and terrestrial species. It wasn’t a single bad day. It was a million-year-long nightmare driven by the earth literally splitting open.
What Actually Triggered the Chaos?
Scientists used to argue about this. Some thought it was a meteor, similar to the Chicxulub impact. Others blamed gradual climate change. But now, the consensus points toward the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, or CAMP.
CAMP isn't a place you'd want to visit.
As Pangea started to pull apart, the crust ripped. This wasn't just a few volcanoes popping off. We are talking about massive flood basalts—cracks in the earth thousands of miles long—spewing lava for hundreds of thousands of years. It covered roughly 11 million square kilometers. That is a lot of fire.
The Greenhouse From Hell
When that much lava comes out, it isn't just the heat that kills. It’s the gas. The CAMP eruptions released staggering amounts of $CO_2$ and methane.
Think about it this way: the planet's temperature spiked. Rapidly.
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Recent studies, like those published in Science and Nature Communications, suggest that the surge in carbon dioxide was so fast that the oceans couldn't keep up. The water became acidic. This is a huge deal for anything with a shell. If you are a coral or a clam and the water starts dissolving your house, you're in trouble.
The Winners and Losers
Life is rarely fair. In the end Triassic extinction event, the "losers" were the guys who were currently winning.
The Crurotarsans—these massive, armor-plated crocodile relatives—ruled the land. They were bigger, meaner, and more diverse than the early dinosaurs. But they couldn't handle the heat or the shifting ecosystems. Most of them vanished.
Dinosaurs, on the other hand, were sort of the "scrappy underdogs" of the Triassic. They were smaller. Many were feathered or had high metabolic rates that somehow allowed them to pivot while everything else died.
- Conodonts: Gone. These were tiny eel-like creatures with "teeth" that are now used to date rocks. They had survived for 300 million years only to get snuffed out here.
- Ammonites: Almost totally destroyed. Only a few lucky lineages made it through to become the icons of the Jurassic.
- Therapsids: Most of the "mammal-like reptiles" were pushed to the fringes.
Why We Should Care in 2026
It's not just about dusty bones.
The end Triassic extinction event is actually the best historical parallel we have for what’s happening to our climate right now. Dr. Jessica Whiteside from the University of Southampton has done incredible work linking the pace of $CO_2$ release during the Triassic to modern emissions.
The rate of change is the killer.
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Animals can adapt to a slow warm-up. They can't adapt to a planetary fever that strikes in a geological heartbeat. During the Triassic, the "pulsing" nature of the eruptions meant the environment never had a chance to stabilize. It was just one punch after another.
The Mystery of the "Empty World"
After the extinction, the world was quiet.
There is this thing called the "Lazarus effect" in paleontology where species seem to disappear and then pop back up much later. The fossil record right after the end Triassic extinction event is famously patchy. It took millions of years for reefs to come back.
But this emptiness was an opportunity.
Because the crocodile-cousins were gone, the dinosaurs had no competition. They grew. They diversified. They took over every niche from the forests to the plains. Without the CAMP eruptions, we wouldn't have Brachiosaurus or Allosaurus. The Jurassic wouldn't have been "Jurassic."
Common Misconceptions
People often mix this up with the "Great Dying" (the Permian extinction). That one was way worse—96% of species died. The Triassic event was like the Permian's "lite" version, but it’s more relevant to us because the plants and animals involved were more "modern."
Another mistake? Thinking it was just "hot."
It was also dark. Some researchers, like those looking at sulfur dioxide emissions, argue there were "volcanic winters" interspersed with the greenhouse heating. One year you're roasting, the next the sun is blocked by sulfuric acid clouds and you're freezing. That kind of volatility is a death sentence for specialized species.
How We Know All This
We look at the leaves. Seriously.
Paleobotanists study fossilized leaves from the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. They count the stomata—the tiny pores plants use to breathe. When $CO_2$ is high, plants grow fewer stomata. By counting these microscopic holes in 200-million-year-old leaves, we can literally see the atmosphere changing.
We also look at mercury.
Huge spikes in mercury levels in the rock layers around the world match the timing of the extinctions. Mercury is a classic volcanic fingerprint. It’s the smoking gun that links the biological deaths to the physical eruptions in the Atlantic.
Moving Forward: What to Watch For
If you want to understand the end Triassic extinction event deeper, don't just read summaries. Look at the data coming out of the Newark Basin in the US or the cliffs in Lyme Regis, UK. These are the front lines of research.
- Audit the atmospheric data: Research how the current rate of carbon release compares to the CAMP pulses. It's eye-opening.
- Explore local geology: If you live on the East Coast of the US, you might be sitting on the very rocks (basalt) that caused this extinction. Look for "Palisades" formations.
- Support Paleontology: Funding for stratigraphic research is how we refine these timelines. The more we know about the "when," the better we understand the "why."
The Triassic didn't end with a bang or a whimper; it ended with a slow, volcanic burn that cleared the stage for the most famous animals to ever walk the Earth. It’s a reminder that the planet is volatile, and life, while resilient, has its breaking points.