The Capitanian mass extinction began around 262 million years ago and peaked in intensity about 259 million years ago, at the close of the Capitanian stage of the Middle Permian epoch. It killed an estimated 33 to 35 percent of marine genera worldwide, and terrestrial vertebrates suffered even more severely, with 74 to 80 percent of tetrapod genera lost in South Africa's Karoo Basin, though some researchers question whether its impact was truly global. Ranking as the third largest mass extinction of the Phanerozoic eon by genera and species lost, behind only the end Permian and Late Ordovician events, it was not recognized as a distinct event separate from the later, larger Permian-Triassic extinction until 1994.
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