



After Earth’s most severe mass extinction, life took up to 9 million years to recover — millions of years longer than after other extinction events. New research published in Geology suggests that a collapse in the ocean’s productivity might have been the cause.
Full content for EARTH is available to subscribers. If you would like to gain access to the full version of this article, as well as all EARTH content, please subscribe today.
If you are connecting using a Library (IP-based) Subscription, please access full issues of the magazine through our Library Access portal.
Did you know ...
EARTH only uses professional science journalists and scientists to author our content? In this era of fake news and click-bait, EARTH offers factual and researched journalism. But EARTH is a non-profit magazine, and at least 10 times more people read EARTH than pay for it. As advertising revenues across the media decline, we need your help to ensure that we can continue bringing you the reliable and well-written coverage of earth science you know and love. Our goal is not only to inform our readers, but to inform decision makers across the economic and political spectrum about the science of our planet. So, we need your help. By becoming a subscriber or making a tax-deductible contribution to support EARTH, you can fund our writers and help make sure the world knows about our planet.