We tend to focus on the extinction of the dinosaurs, but the plant fossil record holds different parts of the story of life – and death – at the end of the Cretaceous
The extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period, 66 million years ago, is the most well-known of the “Big Five” mass extinctions in the fossil record, even if it wasn’t the biggest. That accolade goes to the Great Dying at the end of the Permian Period, about 250 million years ago, when up to 96% of species became extinct. But since the dinosaurs weren’t around for that mass extinction, it hasn’t entered the popular consciousness in quite the same way.
Like most things to do with mass extinctions, even the naming of the Cretaceous event is not without controversy. Many researchers still refer to it as the K-T extinction, where K refers, confusingly, to the Cretaceous (Kreide in German) and T stands for Tertiary (the old name for the subsequent geological period, which has since been split in two). More correctly it is now referred to as the Cretaceous-Palaeogene, or K-Pg, mass extinction.
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Source: Guardian Environment