Pangaea and the Great Dying
Permian
Paleozoic Era · 298.9 – 251.9 million years ago
The Permian Period lasted from 298.9 to 251.9 million years ago, the final chapter of the Palaeozoic Era. During these 47 million years nearly all of Earth's land was gathered into a single supercontinent, Pangaea, and the ancestors of mammals became the dominant animals on land.
Then it all came crashing down. The Permian closed with the largest mass extinction in the history of life, the Great Dying, which wiped out roughly four in five marine species and reshaped life on Earth so profoundly that it marks the boundary between the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic eras.
Key facts
- Began
- 298.9 MaMillion years ago
- Ended
- 251.9 MaMillion years ago
- Duration
- 47 million years
- Era
- Paleozoic“Ancient life”
- Global temperature
- ~17°CRoughly 13–29°C · today 14.5°C
- Plants on land
- Forests
- Atmospheric CO₂
- Rose from roughly pre-industrial levels to ~1,000+ ppm by the end
- Oxygen
- Declined from Carboniferous highs; exact levels debated
- Sea level
- Generally low; much of Pangaea stood above the sea
- Continents
- Nearly all land joined in the supercontinent Pangaea
- Signature life
- Synapsids such as Dimetrodon, gorgonopsians, Glossopteris
- Began with
- Ice sheets still covering parts of southern Pangaea
- Ended with
- The end-Permian extinction, the worst in Earth's history
Ages follow the International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICS). Global temperatures are rough reconstructions after Scotese et al. (2021); ancient CO₂, oxygen and sea-level values carry large uncertainties.
Epochs of the Permian
- Cisuralian298.9 Ma – 273.01 Ma
- Guadalupian273.01 Ma – 259.51 Ma
- Lopingian259.51 Ma – 251.9 Ma
Continents and oceans
By the Permian, the collision of Laurussia and Gondwana was essentially complete, and Siberia and other blocks were welded on as the Ural Mountains rose. The result was Pangaea, a C-shaped supercontinent stretching from near the South Pole to high northern latitudes.
Surrounding it was Panthalassa, a single ocean covering most of the planet. On Pangaea's eastern side lay the Tethys: the older Palaeo-Tethys was gradually being closed off as a string of microcontinents, the Cimmerian blocks, rifted from Gondwana and drifted north, opening the Neo-Tethys Ocean behind them.
With so much land far from the sea, Pangaea's interior became vast and dry. Red sandstones, salt deposits and wind-blown dune fields record deserts and harsh seasonal climates across what are now Europe and North America.
Climate and atmosphere
The Permian opened in the grip of the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age, with glaciers over parts of southern Gondwana. Over the following tens of millions of years the ice retreated, and the last glacial deposits, in eastern Australia, date from the middle to late Permian. The world warmed into a hothouse.
Pangaea's huge size is thought to have driven intense monsoons, with strong contrasts between wet and dry seasons. Carbon dioxide rose through the period, and oxygen probably fell from its Carboniferous peak, though scientists still debate the precise figures.
Life in the Permian
The Permian was the heyday of the synapsids, the group that includes mammals and their extinct relatives. Reptiles were present but had not yet taken centre stage, and the seas held rich reefs that would be devastated at the period's close.
On land
Early Permian landscapes were ruled by sail-backed synapsids such as the predator Dimetrodon and the plant-eating Edaphosaurus. Later, therapsids took over, including sabre-toothed gorgonopsians like Inostrancevia, tusked dicynodonts and, by the end of the period, the first cynodonts, the line that would lead to mammals.
Reptiles and amphibians
Bulky, armoured pareiasaurs such as Scutosaurus browsed on plants, and early relatives of lizards and archosaurs appeared. Large amphibians, including the crocodile-like Eryops, were still common in wetter areas.
Plants
As the coal swamps shrank, seed plants better suited to dry conditions spread, including conifers, cycads and ginkgo relatives. Across Gondwana, the seed fern Glossopteris formed extensive forests.
In the seas
Shallow tropical seas supported large reefs built by sponges, algae and other organisms, alongside brachiopods, ammonoids, crinoids and the last of the trilobites, which died out at the end of the period.
Timeline of key events
- 298.9 Ma
Permian begins
Pangaea is nearly complete and ice sheets still cover parts of southern Gondwana.
- 290 Ma
Sail-backed synapsids thrive
Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus are among the largest land animals in the river plains of Euramerica.
- 273.01 Ma
Guadalupian epoch begins
Therapsids diversify and begin to replace the earlier sail-backed synapsids.
- 260 Ma
Capitanian extinction
A significant extinction, linked by many researchers to the Emeishan eruptions in China, strikes marine and land life.
- 252.2 Ma
Siberian Traps erupt
Massive volcanism in Siberia begins pouring out lava and gases shortly before the extinction.
- 251.9 Ma
The Great Dying
The worst mass extinction in Earth's history ends the Permian and the Palaeozoic Era.
How the Permian ended
Around 251.9 million years ago, the end-Permian mass extinction, often called the Great Dying, struck. Most scientists link it to the Siberian Traps, enormous volcanic eruptions in what is now Russia that released vast amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases. The result was runaway warming, ocean acidification and widespread loss of oxygen in the seas.
Roughly 80–90% of marine species disappeared, along with a large share of land animals and plants, and it is the only mass extinction known to have hit insects hard. The killing itself may have taken only tens of thousands of years, but ecosystems took millions of years to recover.
Where to see Permian fossils
The Karoo Basin of South Africa preserves an exceptional record of Permian therapsids and of the extinction itself, while the red beds of north-central Texas are famous for Dimetrodon. The Guadalupe Mountains of Texas and New Mexico are built from a Permian reef, the Capitan Reef, and contain Carlsbad Caverns.
In Russia, the region around Perm and the Ural foothills gave the period its name, and rich sites along the Northern Dvina River have yielded gorgonopsians and pareiasaurs. At Meishan in southern China, a rock section marks the internationally agreed Permian–Triassic boundary.
Surprising facts about the Permian
- Dimetrodon is often mistaken for a dinosaur, but it lived more than 40 million years before the first dinosaurs and was more closely related to mammals than to any reptile alive today.
- The end-Permian extinction is the only mass extinction known to have devastated insects, wiping out several entire orders.
- Fossils of the seed fern Glossopteris found in South America, Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica were key early evidence that these continents were once joined.
- Robert Falcon Scott's doomed polar party in 1912 was still hauling around 16 kilograms of rocks, including Glossopteris fossils, when its members died on the return from the South Pole.
- The period is named after the Perm region of Russia, where the Scottish geologist Roderick Murchison studied its rocks in the early 1840s.
- After the Great Dying, no coal formed anywhere on Earth for millions of years, a 'coal gap' showing how badly forests had been hit.
Where it sits in deep time
The globe beside this article shows Earth 270 million years ago, reconstructed from the PALEOMAP paleo-elevation models. Step to another period and watch the continents drift into place.