An event scientists call the Great Dying, 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian Era, killed off more than three-quarters of life forms on Earth.

According to a recent study, this event, considered the world's biggest mass extinction, lasted less than 100,000 years, shorter than previously thought. It was marked with massive volcanic eruptions, bolstering the prevailing theory that the mass extinction was caused by a climate shift.

The research also supports the theory that the burst of carbon dioxide and methane thrown into the atmosphere that triggered the die-off took only about 20,000 years but the ecological damage lasted longer.

According to lead author Shu-zhong Shen of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China, while the study was based on cross-sections of soil, both on land and under water, over thousands of miles in southern China, it should be representative of the entire world because of the shift of continents over the past 250 million years.

Study co-author Douglas Erwin, a paleobiology curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said the climate changed because of rapid infusions of carbon dioxide and methane into the air. Findings from other researches said temperatures rose by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit at that time, making the climate at least 15 degrees warmer than it is today.

He added that the greenhouse gases that trap heat probably were released because of immense volcanic activity and the eruptions, probably hundreds of them lasting thousands of years, spewed far more carbon and magma than Earth has witnessed for tens of millions of years.

"I think the lesson you take away from this is that you don't want to get anywhere close to a mass extinction. It took 5 million years before life got better again," he said.