At the time there was extensive volcanic activity in India, spewing out lava flows covering well over a million square kilometres (the ‘Deccan Traps’) which must have had a radical effect on the climate. In favour of this explanation are the ‘Siberian Traps’, over 5 times larger, which are the main suspects in an even worse extinction—indeed the biggest of all time—at the end of the Permian, about a quarter of a billion years ago.
