Refuge from the worst mass extinction in Earth’s history discovered fossilized in China

The mass extinction that killed 80% of life on Earth 250 million years ago may not have been quite so disastrous for plants, new fossils hint. Scientists have identified a refuge in China where it seems that plants weathered the planet’s worst die-off. The end-Permian mass extinction, also known as the “Great Dying,” took place 251.9 million years ago. At that time, the supercontinent Pangea was in the process of breaking up, but all land on Earth was still largely clustered together, with the newly formed continents separated by shallow seas. An enormous eruption from a volcanic system called the…