Fossil records indicate mass extinctions occur with surprising regularity every 26 million years.
There is a growing consensus among paleobiologists that something of enormous destructive power happens every 26 or 27 million years.
Adrian Melott at the University of Kansas and Richard Bambach at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC examined the paleo-record from the last 500 million years, a period that is twice as long as anybody else has studied. Their analysis shows an excess of extinctions every 26-27 million years, with a confidence level of 99%.
The origin of the 27 million year extinction cycle could be one of the great scientific mysteries of our time.
The last extinction event in this chain happened 11 million years ago so, in theory at least, we have plenty of time to work out where the next catastrophe is coming from.
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