From rainforest to herbland: New insights into land plant responses to the end-Permian mass extinction

2020/03/11 by Zhuo Feng, Hai‐Bo Wei, Yun Guo +6 · 6 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils #Plant Diversity and Evolution #Geological and Geophysical Studies

paper · doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103153

openalex publication_date 2020/03/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22

Abstract

The end-Permian mass extinction is the greatest biotic crisis in Earth history causing the extinction of a large number of marine and terrestrial animals globally. However, how land plants responded to the catastrophe remains controversial. The successive plant-bearing beds in China provide a unique window into the great vegetation change through the critical Permian–Triassic time interval. A notable monospecific vegetation comprising a new isoetalean, Tomiostrobus sinensis Feng, is documented from the lowermost part of the coastal Kayitou Formation in Southwest China. The new plant is a diminutive, heterosporous lycophyte, which formed ground-covering communities infringing the oligotrophic lakes along coastal regions. The apparent occurrence of T. sinensis immediately above the uppermost coal bed demonstrates that the enigmatic gigantopterid-dominated rainforest ecosystem suddenly collapsed and was replaced by the isoetalean-dominated herbaceous vegetation in the tropics of the eastern Tethys. Our study indicates that the magnitude of vegetation response to the end-Permian mass extinction in different palaeophytogeographic regions is probably largely affected by the latitudinal gradients of biodiversity and ecological stress. Because of the complexity of local palaeoenvironmental, palaeoclimatic and palaeotopographic conditions, it is unlikely that a unified global pattern and timing of land plant response to the end-Permian mass extinction can be obtained.

Citations

• The terminal Paleozoic fungal event: evidence of terrestrial ecosystem destabilization and collapse.
• The Fossil Record of Insect Extinction: New Approaches and Future Directions
• Vegetation history across the Permian–Triassic boundary in Pakistan (Amb section, Salt Range)
• Recovery of the Triassic land flora from the end-Permian life crisis
• Lethally Hot Temperatures During the Early Triassic Greenhouse
• The delayed resurgence of equatorial forests after the Permian–Triassic ecologic crisis
• EARLY EVOLUTION OF LAND PLANTS: Phylogeny, Physiology, and Ecology of the Primary Terrestrial Radiation
• The terrestrial end-Permian mass extinction in South China
• The number of known plants species in the world and its annual increase
• Severest crisis overlooked—Worst disruption of terrestrial environments postdates the Permian–Triassic mass extinction
• Biostratigraphic correlation and mass extinction during the Permian-Triassic transition in terrestrial-marine siliciclastic settings of South China
• Permian tetrapod extinction events
• Initial pulse of Siberian Traps sills as the trigger of the end-Permian mass extinction
• Late Palaeozoic plants
• No mass extinction for land plants at the Permian–Triassic transition
• Did the Czekanowskiales already exist in the late Permian?

Cited by

• Six-fold increase of atmospheric pCO2 during the Permian–Triassic mass extinction
• Paleoclimate-induced stress on polar forested ecosystems prior to the Permian–Triassic mass extinction
• Climate and biotic evolution during the Permian-Triassic transition in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, Kuznetsk Basin, Siberia, Russia
• Impact of Permian mass extinctions on continental invertebrate infauna
• Proliferation of Isoëtalean Lycophytes During the Permo-Triassic Biotic Crises: A Proxy for the State of the Terrestrial Biosphere
• Permian–Triassic extinction event [wikipedia]