The Cause of Earth’s Largest Environmental Catastrophe

Siberian Traps and their relation to the mass extinction 250 million years ago.

Wow this is quite interesting article to read posted by GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

 The eruption of giant masses of magma in Siberia 250 million years ago led to the Permo-Triassic mass extinction when more than 90 % of all species became extinct. An international team including geodynamic modelers from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences together with geochemists from the J. Fourier University of Grenoble, the Max Plank Institute in Mainz, and Vernadsky-, Schmidt- and Sobolev-Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences report on a new idea with respect to the origin of the Siberian eruptions and their relation to the mass extinction in the recent issue of Nature (15.09.2011, vol. 477, p. 312-316). 

For detail here

Animated model of the lithosphere destruction by the mantle plume