Sea life bounced back fast after the ‘mother of mass extinctions’

Marine life bounced back surprisingly quickly after the ‘mother of mass extinctions’ killed 81% of marine species 251.9 million years ago. More than 1,000 fossils uncovered in southern China show fish, ancient lobsters and prehistoric crab-like creatures existed just a million years after volcanic activity heated the atmosphere and acidified the oceans. It challenges the idea that complex ecosystems took millions of years to recover in a stepwise fashion, from self-sufficient organisms to apex predators.