Buy me a coffeeTimeline 298.9 to 252.17 Million Permian Earth – The Age of Amphibians
With few large herbivorous animals to feed upon them, plants colonised just about every corner of the globe 300-million years ago, creating entirely new ecosystems for animal life to exploit. Land animals grew larger and more diverse than ever before, heralding in the Age of Amphibians and the rise of “mammal-like reptile” megafauna.
298.9 million years ago, the volatile Carboniferous Period ended as the climate stabilised, glaciers receded and oxygen levels dropped. Amphibians were now well established, as were insects. Lush primeval jungles spanned most of the major continents of Pangaea and Siberia which had grown enormously as sea levels dropped.
The end of the Permian saw the demise of almost all life on Earth in what was the most severe extinction event ever known.
Highlights of the Permian
- Great climate variation
- Ancestors of mammals evolve
- Rise of dimetrodons
- Formation of Pangaea
- Worst extinction event in Earth’s history
- Major drop in sea levels
- 275 million years ago: The Serpent People arise and found the kingdom of Valusia.
Giant Lizards Roam a Warming Land
Glaciations that started during the Late Carboniferous continued well into the Early Permian. An icy tundra dominated the once temperate lands of what is now the Antarctic. In terms of climate diversity, the world was rather like what we know today, with distinct climactic belts forming a diverse range of ecosystems across the supercontinent of Pangea.
The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse of the preceding period had served as a destructive extinction event. The enormously high oxygen levels plummeted as vast swathes of swamp forest died out. The Early Permian saw the glaciers recede markedly, giving space for the life-bearing swamp forests to expand once again.
As the Permian climate became warmer and drier, life continued to thrive mostly in lowland floodplains where semiaquatic animals were at the top of the food chain.
Terrifying Predators Rise to the Top of the Food Chain
Dmitry Bogdanov
Characterised by their large, bulky bodies, the gigantic lizard-like dinocephalians came in both herbivorous and carnivorous forms. The latter quickly rose to the top of the food chain, becoming one of the most terrifying predators to ever walk the Earth.
Dinocephalia were among the most successful of all Palaeozoic orders of terrestrial mammals. Perhaps the best known of them all was moschops, Another bizarre creature belonging to the order was the ‘antlered’ estemmenosuchus. Despite being the dominant terrestrial animal of their time, the entire dinocephalian suborder died out around 260-million years ago, leaving no descendants. Their sudden disappearance remains a mystery.
This photo of a public display from Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago shows the bizarre dental arrangement of a Permian helicoprion.
While dinocephalians and dimetrodons ruled over the Permian swamplands, something perhaps even more formidable terrorised the ancient Panthalassic Ocean. These titanic marine monstrosities are known as helicoprions, a type of prehistoric shark that thrived between 290- and 250-million years ago. While enormous sharks are disconcerting enough, helicoprion also had a circular saw in place of its teeth.
Ancestors to Mammals Evolve
The ferocious inostrancevia was the largest of the carnivorous gorgonopsids. It grew up to 11.5 feet (3.5 metres) long and likely preyed upon the slightly larger scutosaurus, a reptile with which it shared its habitat.
Synapsids were already well-established by the Late Permian, an epoch also known as the Lopingian. Some of these orders managed to survive the Permian Mass Extinction, forming the foundation of evolution that started the Cenozoic Era, that which saw the dinosaurs rise to fame.
Two main orders of synapsid dominated terrestrial ecosystems during the Late Permian: the carnivorous gorgonopsids and the herbivorous dicynodonts. Both taxons were extremely successful, colonising vast swathes of land spanning the supercontinent of Pangaea. They thrived in a diverse range of habitats, ranging from coastal shallows to inland swamp forests to drier, fully terrestrial regions. Among the most common and successful was lystrosaurus, a piglet-sized dicynodont that survived well into the Triassic.
Gorgonopsids were the largest terrestrial carnivores during the Late Permian, with inostrancevia being the size of a large grizzly bear. Many of these ferocious beasts are mistakenly referred to as dinosaurs, but they were not in fact closely related. Dozens of gorgonopsids species have been discovered, ranging from the agile-looking lycaenops to the dog-sized sycosaurus. Among the smallest was the aloposaurus, which grew no larger than a cat.
The Great Dying Transforms the Face of the Earth
Lystrosaurus
Lystrosaurus, meaning ‘shovel lizard’, was one of the few families of animals to survive the Permian-Triassic Extinction and live well into the Triassic period.
Steadily decreasing biodiversity, likely caused in part by climate change and volcanic activity, culminated some 252-million years ago in the most severe extinction event in the history of our planet. Marine ecosystems in particular were left truly devastated by the Permian-Triassic extinction event, with as many as 96% of all species disappearing off the face of the Earth forever. Terrestrial ecosystems also underwent a devastating series of mass extinctions, with over two thirds of all land vertebrates vanishing. Even insects took a major hit in what was the only mass dying of their kind. Trilobites, having thrived for 300-million years, also died out.
Quite what caused the Permian Extinction Event remains shrouded in mystery. However, climate change and transformation of the Earth’s atmosphere played a major role. For a start, the rapid decrease in oxygen-producing forests led to plummeting oxygen levels which, by the beginning of the Triassic, were less than half what they were during the Carboniferous. As a side-effect, the oceans suffered a deadly anoxic event, whereby greatly decreased oxygen levels in the water literally choked almost all maritime life to death. At the same time, rising global temperatures, due in part to increasing prevalence of CO2 in the atmosphere, also made for a stressful environment for many terrestrial Permian organisms.
The Late Permian extinction was the result of a combination of causes, perhaps even including an impact event like that which is believed to have wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs some 186-million years later.
Owing to the profound changes to the Earth’s biosphere and the devastatingly high loss of species diversity, life took an exceedingly long time to recover after The Great Dying. The intensity of the crisis lead to a recovery period of some 10-million years, during which time the climate continued to change, further strangling the course of evolution.
Conclusion
The Permian-Triassic Extinction event marked the end of the Phanerozoic Era, which had spanned 289-million years. However, despite the profound transformation of our world, and despite suffering unimaginably heavy losses, some important groups did manage to survive, including the dicynodonts, which survived well into the Late Triassic.