Over the past 500 million years of Earth's history, mass extinction episodes and other extreme environmental changes occurred during times of major volcanic eruptions, sometimes also accompanied by bolide impact events. Causal relationship has been demonstrated using different proxies and approaches, but our understanding of the wider context and nature of environmental changes before, during, and after these events is still incomplete. This session invites contributions presenting the latest advances about the end-Ordovician, Late and end-Devonian, end-Permian, end-Triassic, end-Cretaceous, and other periods of biotic crisis and/or global climate, such as e.g. Oceanic Anoxic Events or the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. The goal of the session is to bring together researchers from geological, geochemical, geophysical, and biological disciplines to improve our knowledge of the cause-effect scenario of the five major mass extinction events and other lesser-known events of environmental and climatic crisis.