Flooding, drought and wildfires caused by climate change could do as much damage to our planet as a giant asteroid or massive volcanic eruption, experts warn

Earth’s most famous mass extinction event was the giant asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

But although it was severe, obliterating some 76 per cent of the world’s species, there have been two other more devastating near apocalypses throughout our planet’s 4.5 billion-year history and five in total.

MailOnline looks into these different catastrophic events, from the ‘Great Dying’ to the Kellwasser cataclysm, and asks scientists what is most likely to cause a sixth, where it would leave us and if such a scenario is already under way.