Global Cooling

Approximately 251 million years ago, on the border of the Permian and Triassic geological periods, a million-year-long volcanic eruption of magma poured out of the Earth from what is present-day Norilsk and produced the Siberian Traps – essentially paving over 2 million square kilometers of what is now northwestern Siberia with basaltic lava. It is the largest eruption known in the history of the planet.

The eruption also created the giant Norilsk-Talnakh nickel-copper-palladium deposit.

At around the same geological time, the Great Dying occurred, in which 96 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of all terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct. Many scientists feel the two events are connected, as the massive eruption would have poured huge quantities sulfate gas into the atmosphere, leading to global cooling.