image: This is a photo of part of a single sill from the Siberian Traps. These sills are common and often enormous, sometimes in excess of 100 meters thick. Sills are thought by many to be the driving force behind the volatile production that triggered mass extinction. This sill was dated in the present study. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Aug. 28, 2015, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by S. Burgess at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, and colleagues was titled, 'High-precision geochronology confirms voluminous magmatism before, during, and after Earth's most severe extinction.' view more
Credit: [Credit: Dougal Jerram]