Key Points
Runaway global warming triggered by calamitous volcanism in Siberia inflicted the worst mass extinction on record dooming perhaps 90% of species roughly 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian Period...
Unlike the asteroid 66 million years ago that ravaged the dinosaurs, this extinction event unfolded over a protracted time span, with species perishing one by one as conditions worsened..
This beast, a tiger-sized, saber-toothed mammal forerunner called Inostrancevia, had been known only from fossils excavated in Russias northwestern corner bordering the Arctic Sea until new remains were discovered at a farm in central South Africa...
However, it did not survive there long, said paleontologist Christian Kammerer of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, lead author of the research published in the journal Current Biology, noting that Inostrancevia and all of its closest relatives disappeared in the mass extinction called the Great Dying...
I suspect these animals primarily killed prey with their saber-like canine fangs and either carved out chunks of meat with the serrated incisors or, if it was small enough, swallowed the prey whole, Kammerer said.. Inostrancevias body had an unusual posture typical of protomammals, not quite sprawling like a reptile or erect like a mammal but something in between, with sprawled forelimbs and mostly erect hind limbs..
