BY JEFF BERARDELLI, KATHERINE NIEMCZYK

MARCH 4, 2021 / 8:44 PM/ CBS NEWS

Right now our planet is in the midst of what science says is an unprecedented rate of change, unlike anything seen in tens of millions of years. Overconsumption, unsustainable practices and the release of immense amounts of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels are altering our life-sustainingclimateat a dangerous pace, oceans are acidifying and losing oxygen, andspecies are dying off.

But this is not the first time that life on our planet has faced an epic challenge. The worst came a little over 250 million years ago — before dinosaurs walked the earth — in an episode called the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction, or the Great Dying, when 90% of life in the oceans and 70% of life on land vanished.

Recently, two groundbreaking studies on the Great Dying reveal…