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More than 90 percent of all life on Earth was destroyed in just 60,000 years, according to the latest study of Permian mass extinction. Permian mass extinction is the greatest die-off in the past 540 million years. 

The study did not identify the reason behind the die-off but scientists believed it could be volcanic eruptions in Siberia that belched massive quantities of climate-changing gases. 

"Whatever caused the extinction was really rapid, or the biosphere reached some critical threshold," Seth Burgess, lead study author and a geochemist at MIT told Live Science. "Having an accurate timeline for the events surrounding the mass extinction and the interval itself is extremely important, because it gives us an idea of how the biosphere responds."

Permian mass extinction is marked as the end of the Permian geologic period which ended nearly 252 million years ago. In the die-off more than 96 percent of marine life and nearly 70 percent of land species were perished. 

"This is one of the fundamental inflection points in the trajectory of life on Earth," Burgess said. "It set the stage for the [rest] of evolution."

According to previous reports, the best record of the Permian great dying is in Meishan, China. 

"An accurate and high-precision age model gives us a reliable sounding [board] against which we can start comparing all of the other things that started happening with the mass extinction," Burgess added. 

The findings of the study are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.