Delayed recovery of non-marine tetrapods after the end-Permian mass extinction tracks global carbon cycle

During the end-Permian mass extinction, marine ecosystems suffered a major drop in diversity, which was maintained throughout the Early Triassic until delayed recovery during the Middle Triassic. This depressed diversity in the Early Triassic correlates with multiple major perturbations to the globa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Biological sciences, 2012-04, Vol.279 (1732), p.1310-1318
Main Authors: Irmis, Randall B, Whiteside, Jessica H
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
aquatic invertebrates
Archosauromorpha
Carbon Cycle
Chaotic Carbon Interval
Datasets
Ecosystem
embryophytes
Evenness
extinction
Extinction, Biological
Fossils
History, Ancient
Marine
Marine ecosystems
Mass extinction events
Middle Triassic epoch
Paleontology
Relative Abundance
Richness
Sample size
Species extinction
Synapsida
Taxa
Terrestrial ecosystems
Vertebrates
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Summary:During the end-Permian mass extinction, marine ecosystems suffered a major drop in diversity, which was maintained throughout the Early Triassic until delayed recovery during the Middle Triassic. This depressed diversity in the Early Triassic correlates with multiple major perturbations to the global carbon cycle, interpreted as either intrinsic ecosystem or external palaeoenvironmental effects. In contrast, the terrestrial record of extinction and recovery is less clear; the effects and magnitude of the end-Permian extinction on non-marine vertebrates are particularly controversial. We use specimen-level data from southern Africa and Russia to investigate the palaeodiversity dynamics of non-marine tetrapods across the Permo-Triassic boundary by analysing sample-standardized generic richness, evenness and relative abundance. In addition, we investigate the potential effects of sampling, geological and taxonomic biases on these data. Our analyses demonstrate that non-marine tetrapods were severely affected by the end-Permian mass extinction, and that these assemblages did not begin to recover until the Middle Triassic. These data are congruent with those from land plants and marine invertebrates. Furthermore, they are consistent with the idea that unstable low-diversity post-extinction ecosystems were subject to boom–bust cycles, reflected in multiple Early Triassic perturbations of the carbon cycle.
ISSN:0962-8452
1471-2954
1471-2945
DOI:10.1098/rspb.2011.1895