What happened during this time?

Geophysical

• The Earth was still in an ice age at the start of this epoch, but glaciers receded around the mid-Permian period as the climate gradually warmed, drying the continent's interiors

• Gondwana collided Laurussia (see image below) and created the Alleghenian orogeny in present-day North America, while the Hercynian orogeny continued in northwestern Europe

• These events created the large supercontinent, Pangea, by the middle of this epoch, which would impact the climate

Biological

Flora, spore-bearing

• Scale trees, such as Sigillaria, are still around and emergent trees

• Extant clubmoss groups, such as the Lycopodiales and Selaginellales are found in the understory of some forests

• Marattialean tree ferns dominate along with progymnosperms in the beginning of the Early Permian

• Sphenophyllophytes and zygopterid ferns are found in the under-story, and horsetails along rivers and wetlands

• True ferns are beginning to appear on the landscape

• Noeggerathian progymnosperms are present, and initially dominant swamp environments

Flora, seed-bearing

• Unequivocal fossils belonging to Cycads appeared in the late Early Permian (~280 Ma); there is debate on fossils attributed to cycads from the Carboniferous

• Cordaites start to dominate in Euramerica; Glossopterids start to dominate in Gondwana

• Giganopterids were among the most striking and important plants of the Cathaysian flora of Sino-Malaya (Wang 1999)

• Seed ferns, such as the Medullosales and Callistophytales, were still on the landscape, but will go extinct at the end of the Early Permian

• Vojnovskyales, a bizarre seed plant group with flower-like cones, appears in the Pennsylvanian, to quickly disappear in the Early Permian 

• The oldest known Bennettitalean appears from Upper Shihhotse Formation, Shanxi, China

Fauna

• Lowland biomes are strongly tied to water and to a plant-arthropod-fish food chain, similar to the Carboniferous Period

• Both in the uplands and the lowlands insects continued to represent an astonishing diversity of forms

  • Beetles and flies originate during this time

  • Earliest evidence of insects preserved with pollen on their heads, thoraces, legs, and abdomens (Khramov et al. 2023)

• The synapsids, Diadectes and Edaphosaurus, were the only terrestrial herbivores

  • Carnivorous synapsids, such as Dimetrodon were large predators on the landscape

• The drier upland was inhabited by a different fauna, mostly smaller insectivores

• The bizarre shark, Helicoprion , existed during this time