About 252 million years ago, 80 to 90 percent of life on Earth was wiped out. In the Turpan-Hami Basin, life persisted and bounced back faster.

Can plants uncover the survival secrets of Earth’s darkest days? A research team from (UCC), the University of Connecticut, and the Natural History Museum of Vienna has uncovered how plants responded to catastrophic climate change 250 million years ago.

Even during one of Earth's largest mass extinction events, where heat waves kill of a majority of Earth's species, at least one oasis of survival existed. The findings suggest that there may have been pockets of protection throughout Earth - challenging the notion that the heat affected life on the planet uniformly,