Yes, completely overstated. The 2009 paper on the supernova causing the Ordovician extinction (https://arxiv.org/pdf/0809.0899 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0809.0899)

Yes, completely overstated. The 2009 paper on the supernova causing the Ordovician extinction (https://arxiv.org/pdf/0809.0899 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0809.0899) has always been viewed skeptically, even for a paleontology paper. The Ordovician extinction has always been contentious. There's evidence of a severe ice age, but ocean water temperature proxies don't line up. There's even a "It didn't happen" faction among paleontologits. There's probably 4 other plausible theories for that particular mass extinction, including 2 kinds of volcanism, dust influx from the L-Chondritic parent body breakup causing the ice age, land plants drawing down atmospheric CO2 causing the ice age, a meteor impact in Australia, and to my mind, a vastly less plausible explanation, "true polar wander": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35609-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35609-3