Budleigh Salterton, on the south coast of Engand, sits above the most frightening cliffs on Earth. They are not particularly high or especially prone to collapse. The horror is contained in the story they tell. For they capture the moment at which life on Earth almost came to an end.
The sediments preserved in these cliffs were laid down in the early Triassic period, just after the greatest mass extinction in the history of multicellular life that brought the Permian period to an end 252m years ago. About 90% of species died, and fish and four-footed
