Another thing to pin on fossil fuels (Image: Joel Sartore/NGS/Getty)

FOSSIL fuels have a new crime to live down. A frenzy of hydrocarbon burning at the end of the Permian period may have led to the most devastating mass extinction Earth has ever seen, as explosive encounters between magma and coal released more carbon dioxide in the course of a few years than in all of human history.

Around 250 million years ago, the so-called “Great Dying” saw 70 per cent of species wiped out on land and 95 per cent in the oceans. A clue to what may have …