"For more than 15 years, an international group of paleontologists has been uncovering and analyzing fossils in Africa to better understand the Permian, a geologic period that....ended with the most catastrophic mass extinction in Earth’s history.
“This mass extinction was nothing short of a cataclysm for life on Earth,...,” said Christian Sidor, a UW professor of biology and
The series highlights recent findings about the wide variety of animals that once inhabited Permian Africa, including saber-toothed predators, burrowing herbivores, and a large amphibian resembling a salamander.
All these finds were excavated in three basins across southern Africa: the Ruhuhu Basin in southern Tanzania, the Luangwa Basin in eastern Zambia, and the Mid-Zambezi Basin in southern Zambia.
For decades, scientists’ best understanding of the Permian, the Great Dying and the start of the Mesozoic came from the Karoo Basin in South Africa, which contains a near-complete fossil record of periods before and after the mass extinction.
"The number of specimens we’ve found in Zambia and Tanzania is so high and their condition is so exquisite that we can make species-level comparisons to what paleontologists have found in South Africa,” said Sidor."
SciTechDaily
