Two-hundred fifty-two million years ago, volcanic eruptions led to massive climate changes. Around the globe, roughly 75 percent of all land-based organisms and roughly 90 percent of all marine organisms died out as a result. Dr. William Foster from Universität Hamburg's Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN) and colleagues have now used a new form of machine learning to unravel the causes of the mass extinction in the oceans. This was possible because the "machine" part of machine learning is normally a "black box," but Dr. Foster and colleagues have managed to open that box: They have not only determined which organisms went extinct and which survived—but also why. Their findings have just been published in the journal Paleobiology.