Olenekian Stage

What happened during this time?

• Incredibly slow rate of recovery from Permian extinction until Olenekian.

• In just half a million years, the process accelerated, and the world's living systems recovered something resembling their Late Permian vitality (Looy et al. 1999).

  • In the Lopingian (Late Permian), Europe was covered in conifer forests. 

  • At the end-Permian, the conifers simply disappear. 

• For the Induan and most of the Olenekian, the region was covered by Pleuromeiales stands. 

  • During this period, soil formation was low; total biomass of these lycopsids was not particularly impressive, or the rate of erosion was unusually high. 

  • Few tree-sized species, and the soils would not have been strongly held. 

  • This may well have been a world-wide phenomenon, in view of the global absence of Early Triassic coal deposits. 

• Late in the Olenekian, the lycopsids were rapidly replaced by a transitional flora of low, shrub-like, and rather simple conifers. 

• Within half a million years, this was succeeded by open, Voltzia-dominated conifer forests, not so different from the original cover of the Lopingian.