Continental flood basalts drive Phanerozoic extinctions

Although the causes of the five largest mass extinctions remain controversial, geochronological improvements have revealed an apparent correlation between large igneous provinces (LIPs) and periods of Phanerozoic faunal turnover. This paper establishes that this relationship is unlikely to occur by chance and defines an eruptive rate threshold, above which known continental LIPs correlate with large extinctions. Continental LIPs also have an approximately linear relationship between their eruptive rate and extinction magnitude. It is difficult to attribute the causality of any one extreme event like an extinction with certainty, but there is an overall correlation between continental LIPs and extinction events that warrants consideration.