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Hello, some mass extinctions happen instantly.

As when an asteroid hits the earth and some can take millions of years, the late Devonian

extinction was one of the slower kind, but still devastating.

The Devonian has seen the first trees and soils on such a diversity of sea life that is

known as the Age of Fishes, some of the massive and armoured.

But roughly 370 million years ago, around 70% of species disappeared and we're still trying

to establish exactly what happened when and why.

When we discuss the late Devonian extinction, Jessica Whiteside, Associate Professor of Geochemistry

in the Department of Ocean and Earth Sciences at the University of Southampton, David Bond,

Professor of Geology at the University of Hull and Mike Benton, Professor of Berserbread

Pollyontology at the School of Life Sciences University of Bristol, Mike Benton, just how

different did Earth look in the Devonian period?

Pretty extinction.

I think if you'd gone back to the Devonian world and looked at it from space, it would

have looked very different immediately because the layout of the continents was most unusual.

Most of the continents, in fact, were in the southern hemisphere forming a supercontinent

called Gondwana.

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