Most Dominant Aninal to Rule Earth

There was a time when a pig-sized creature once ruled our planet.

Around 250 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic extinction event, known as "The Great Dying," wiped out more than 90% of all species on Earth, the biggest out of the five mass extinction events that happened on Earth. But one species, the Lystrosaurus, survived this mass extinction and became a dominant species like Earth has never seen, accounting for as much as 95% of all terrestrial animals at its peak.

We have different theories on why this animal survived and thrived in this extinction event, including its special diet, unusual lung capacity, and capacity to hibernate. However, we don’t know for sure. On the other hand, its dominance was essential to validate the theory of Pangea. This supercontinent united all land masses on Earth, as we found fossils in South Africa, India, and Antarctica, proving that these were connected by land at some point.

Nature is a continuous dance of change, adaptation, and evolution. As with any complex system, luck plays a part, and Lystrossaurus was in the right place and at the right time to exploit an extremely rare extinction event that drastically changed the conditions on Earth.

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