Extinctions: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? Massive eruptions (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, August 29, 2015, 09:03 (3166 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: For the extinction about 250 million years ago, volcanoes: -http://www.livescience.com/52017-catastrophic-volcanoes-caused-biggest-tinction.html?cmpid=NL_LS_weekly_2015-08-28
 
"Geologists hauling hundreds of pounds of 250-million-year-old rocks from Siberia, through Russian and American customs, say luck was on their side. Not only did they successfully transport the huge haul, but they also may have confirmed the cause of Earth's worst mass extinction.
 
"The culprit? Catastrophic volcanic eruptions that spewed enough lava to cover Australia led to the die-off at the end of the Permian era, the researchers found. That die-off occurred about 250 million years ago and was the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history; 90 percent of marine species and 75 percent of land dwellers were wiped off the face of the planet over the course of about 60,000 years."-Preprogrammed by God, who had preprogrammed 10% of marine species and 25% of land dwellers to survive so that they could eventually create the innovations necessary to produce humans? Or a random catastrophe which some organisms were lucky enough to survive so that they were able to continue the higgledy-piggledy process of evolution?