The Carboniferous

Period runs from

359 to 299 Ma.

The Permian Period

runs from 299 to 252
Ma.
Carboniferous

Recap Key events &

concepts
• Carboniferous: coal;
first amniotes
• Permian: evaporites;
Pangea forms
• End-Permian mass
extinction (largest
mass extinction ever)
Carboniferous and Permian paleogeography
In the Carboniferous, low lying swampy forests appear to have been far
more extensive than they are today.
Carboniferous amphibians radiate
Carboniferous and Permian paleogeography

Pangaea Supercontinent, Panthalassa Super Ocean

 Permian period
• Culmination of Pangaea
• Retraction of coal
swamps
• Increased arid regions,
evaporite deposits
• Decreased shorelines
• Extinction rampant
Evaporites
 Evaporites
• Delaware basin, massive
redbed deposit
• Also carbonate from Early
Permian when there was
access to sea via Hovey
Channel
• Major source of potash
and rock salt
• Carboniferous carbonates
are reservoir for oil
• 2 million barrels of oil per
day
Shift in Permian ecosystems to environments that include drier climates.
Collapse of the Carboniferous forests. Shallow, near shore environments
were limited due to Pangaea arrangement. Could cause extinction.
Amphibians had the world largely to themselves until the Late Carboniferous, when the
first amniotes evolved. Most skeletal differences between amphibians and early amniotes
were minor. The main difference was the mode of reproduction: amniotes developed the
ability to produce amniote eggs—eggs with a durable outer shell, a sac filled with
nutritious yolk, and two other sacs, one called the amnion that contains the embryo, and
another that collects waste products.

Embryo
Shell Waste

Fossilized
reptile egg
Yolk
(Permian)
The amniote egg is essentially a self-contained “pond”: it freed
vertebrates from moist habitats, allowing them to colonize well drained
uplands. It essentially accomplished for vertebrates what the seed
accomplished for plants.

Modern amphibian eggs Modern reptile eggs

--Still need the pond-- --No pond required--

Animals emerge from amniote eggs into air with an adult-like form (no
larval stage...no pollywogs).
Major amniote radiation

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Synapsids Reptiles
 Synapsids

Reptiles
And then…..it nearly all gets wiped
out!
 Lecture 10B
The End-Permian Extinction
Goals:

1. What were their potential causes?

2. Understand what went extinct

3. What changes took place?

The End-Permian Extinction — Why do we care?

The most severe mass extinction (nothing like it

before or since). Its severity has lead it to be
dubbed the ‘Great Dying’ event
 End-Permian extinction
• Forms the boundary between the Permian
and Triassic Periods
• Also the boundary between the Paleozoic and
Mesozoic
• 96% of marine species and 70% terrestrial
species disappear
• Recovery will take very long, ~10My
 End-Permian extinction
• When did it happen?
• U-Pb zircons from five volcanic ash beds point
to End-Permian/Early Triassic
• Date ranges 251 – 250 My
• Temperatures rise 5-8 degrees Celsius
• CO2 levels increase by 2000 ppm
• Fungal spike, sharp increase in dead things
 Extinction occurred in Two
Pulses

1st at end of Mid-Permian

• Affected both life on land and in

the sea

• Distinctive because it affected

mostly reef-building taxa
 Extinction occurred in Two
Pulses

2nd extinction at end of the Permian

• Affected 80% of species

• All fusulinid forams, rugose corals,

tabulate corals, trilobites,
blastoids and several brachiopods
and bryozoans became extinct

• 75% of all amphibians and 80% of

the amniote families went extinct
 Causes
• Pinpointing the cause is difficult
• Happened long ago, 251 My
• Much evidence erased
 Proposed causes & outcomes
• Bolide impact
• Massive volcanism, Siberian Traps
• Runaway greenhouse effect, CO2 and methane

• Outcomes include:
– Changes in sea level
– Increasing ocean anoxia
– Increasing terrestrial aridity
– Increasing ocean acidification
**
 Possible impact
• The evidence pointing to end Cretaceous
impact event led scientists to look for P-T
crater
• Most likely would have hit earth in the ocean
• Crust recycled already
• Possible craters in Australia and Antarctica
 Possible impact

Evidence of shocked quartz, and craters in Antarctica and Australia

dated to 250 Ma
• But this has been challenged, some saying plastic deformation
caused shocked quartz-like granules
 Massive volcanism
• Siberian traps
• Largest volcanism event on earth
• Covered 7,000,000 square kms
• Date of the extinction and the volcanism in
agreement
Siberian traps
The fossils
 Siberian Traps
• However, large basaltic lava floods typically
not explosive -> slow degassing
• But, there is evidence of pyroclastic (~20%)
eruptions
 Massive volcanism
• Dust clouds would block sunlight:
photosynthesis on land and in photic zone
would cease and cause collapse of food webs
• Acid rain due to ejected acid aerosols
• CO2 emissions would increase global
temperatures and contribute to ocean
acidification
What mechanisms are advanced for
this extinction event?

• Eruptions would have generated many

environmental stresses simultaneously
 Extinction by volcanism
• Although initially sunlight would have been
blocked (cooling effect), CO2 would eventually
cause greenhouse (warming) effect
• Temperatures rise
Global Warming Caused by input of
Greenhouse Gases into the Atmosphere

1. The lavas erupted through the world's largest

coal basin

The eruption released CO2 from deep in the

Earth, and caused massive amounts of coal to
burn
At the end-Permian mass extinction there is a
strong negative excursion for carbon in terrestrial
and marine sediments

What does this shift mean?

• CO2 level increased in the atmosphere (and ocean)
Increased CO2 caused: acidification in the ocean and enhanced
acid rain on land
• The concentration of CO2 was unusually high in oceans
• Concentration of CO2 in surface waters of the Permian oceans
was about 30 times over normal
 CO2 and ocean acidification
• Ocean acidification affects calcium carbonate
skeleton building organisms
• Reef building organisms particularly hard hit
by End-Permian extinction event
• CO2 is absorbed by the ocean
• There, CO2 reacts with H2O to form carbonic
acid, releasing a H+ ions (->acidifies)
• This leads to a dissolution of carbonate
– this dissolves shelled animals and decreases shell
building processes
Global Warming Caused by input of
Greenhouse Gases into the Atmosphere

2. The eruptions would also have released

substantial amounts of methane trapped in the
coal

Remember methane (CH4) is a much more

powerful greenhouse gas than CO2
Global Warming Caused by input of
Greenhouse Gases into the Atmosphere

3. Warming led to anoxia in the oceans

Remember amount of O2 dissolved in the ocean

decreases as temperature increases
Environmental changes
that occurred during
Permo-Triassic
Transition

Anoxia appeared in the

deep sea
• Drops in oxygen
concentrations in the
deep sea
These strata indicate that the
deep sea was well oxidized until
the very end of the Mid-Permian.

• Before the Mid-Permian,

radiolarian cherts contained
hematite, a highly oxidized
iron mineral. The presence of
hematite indicates that the
deep ocean was oxygen-rich
 At the end-Mid-Permian extinction
gray sediments suddenly replaced
red cherts

• Signaled the onset of low-

oxygen conditions in the deep
sea

**
• Anoxic sediments accumulated in shallow water on the
continental shelves around the margins of the Panthalassic
Ocean (areas of diverse ecosystems)
• The appearance of black shales in shallower water
stratigraphic successions confirm this
 Other effects on land

Volcanic eruption would have also produced

vast amounts of sulfur dioxide (SO2)

à This SO2 can combine with water to produce

sulfuric acid (H2SO4)

à Produced even more severe acid rain

 Runaway greenhouse effect
• Sudden methane gas release
• Methane is produced by methanogens
(specific types of microbes)
• This methane is trapped in cages of frozen
water molecules = clathrates
• Found under sediments of ocean floor and in
permafrost
• Sudden release, possibly associated with lava
contact, would cause warming
 Extinction patterns
• In the ocean, marine life
• Land plants
• Land invertebrates (insects)
• Land vertebrates
It changed the history of life
in the ocean:

• The end Permian extinction

was associated with a
major change in the
dominant life in the oceans

• The change from the

"Paleozoic Evolutionary
Fauna” to "Modern
Evolutionary Fauna"
 The Three Evolutionary Faunas

Cambrian Fauna
Trilobites
Inarticulate Brachiopods
Paleozoic Fauna
Articulate Brachiopods
Rugose Corals
Cephalopods
Crinoids
Graptolites
Trilobites
Modern Fauna
Bivalves
Gastropods
Echinoids
Fishes
52% of the “families” of marine organisms died out
in the End Permian extinction

• In the other four mass extinctions between 10%

and 15% of the families died out

• Diversity of genera in Late Permian declined by

75%

• The extinction of 52% families and 75% genera

means that about 96% of all species may have
died out!
Reefs:
• Eliminated from shallow
seas by the extinction
• They will return after the
deep sea was fully re-
oxygenated

Middle Triassic
Completely Extinct
- Tabulate corals, rugose corals, several major
groups of brachiopods, trilobites, fusulinid
forams
 Species that did ok
• Those that have efficient gas exchange organs
(to deal with the anoxia)
• Those that are lightly calcified skeletons (could
deal with acidification)
 Land Plants
• Massive rearrangement of the flora occurs
• Major decline in the gymnosperm Cordaites
and the seed fern Glossopteris
• Dominant gymnosperms replaced by
lycophytes (primitive, disturbance loving
plants)
• Loss of large woodland floras
• Succession by herbaceous floras
 Land Plants
• Loss of Glossopteris reflects changing climate
• Glossopteris preferred cooler climates,
extinction due to warming climate at P-T
 Terrestrial invertebrates
• The End Permian is considered the only mass
extinction event for insects
• There was great diversity in the Permian,
including some of the largest forms seen
• 8 or 9 insect orders go extinct and 10 more
become greatly reduced
• With the exception of a few groups, the post-
Paleozoic insect diversity is very different
 Terrestrial vertebrates
• Synapsids: few members of the therapsid
lineage survive
• Reptiles: few reptiles survive
• Amphibians: take huge hit, large aquatic forms
survive and relatives of modern amphibians
survive
Synapsids (mammal-line)
 Triassic synapsids
• Those that survived include capable
burrowing forms
 Reptiles
• Reptiles radiate in the Triassic following
 Reptiles
• Permian reptiles
 Amphibians
• Early Permian: large and unusual
 Triassic amphibians
• Either tiny, like modern ones or large/aquatic
Impact on the History of Life

The Permian extinction

divides the history of life into
two major segments:

1. A relatively level interval

that lasted for 200
million years during the
Paleozoic

2. Diversity has increased

continuously ever since.
What happened 250
million years ago
continues to influence
the world.
 Bottom line

The end Permian was a terrible time to live on

Earth
• It happened rather quickly we think
• Had huge lasting effects