Permian Extinction: Repopulation Was Diversification, Not Climate
Friday, October 28, 2011 - 23:40
in Paleontology & Archaeology
252 million years ago there was a watershed moment in the history of life on Earth - namely that there was almost no life left on Earth. As much as 90 percent of ocean organisms were extinguished, ushering in a new order of marine species, some of which we still see today and land dwellers also sustained major losses.A new paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B undertook an exhaustive specimen-by-specimen analysis of surviving land-based vertebrates. The survivors, a handful of genera labeled "disaster taxa," were free to roam more or less unimpeded, with few competitors in their respective ecological niches. read more
