Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A meteor's roaring crash into Antarctica -- larger and earlier than the impact that killed the dinosaurs -- caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history and likely spawned the Australian continent, scientists said. Ohio State University scientists said the 483-kilometer-wide (300-mile-wide) crater is now hidden more than 1.6 kilometers (one mile) beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. "Gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years -- the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out," the university said in a statement Thursday....

The end-Permian extinction, by far the most dramatic biological crisis to affect life on Earth, may not have been as catastrophic for some creatures as previously thought, according to a new study led by the University of Bristol.An international team of researchers studied the parareptiles, a diverse group of bizarre-looking terrestrial vertebrates which varied in shape and size. Some were small, slender, agile and lizard-like creatures, while others attained the size of rhinos; many had knobbly ornaments, fringes, and bony spikes on their skulls. The researchers found that, surprisingly, parareptiles were not hit much harder by the end-Permian extinction than...