About 252 million years ago, 80 to 90 percent of life on Earth was wiped out. In the Turpan-Hami Basin, life persisted and bounced back faster.

Even during one of Earth's largest mass extinction events, where heat waves kill of a majority of Earth's species, at least one oasis of survival existed. The findings suggest that there may have been pockets of protection throughout Earth - challenging the notion that the heat affected life on the planet uniformly,

A new study reveals that a region in China's Turpan-Hami Basin served as a refugium, or "life oasis," for terrestrial plants during the end-Permian mass extinction, the most severe biological crisis since the Cambrian period.