what era did the mass extinction happen
Permian-Triassic Extinction. In this video segment from Evolution: Extinction!, geologist Peter Ward shows rock layers laid down during the Permian and Triassic periods. The Permian layers contain abundant animal fossils and fossilized traces of animals, while the Triassic layers are almost devoid of fossils, suggesting a mass extinction event occurred 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian.