Rocks deposited across the Triassic-Jurassic boundary (TJB) are preserved in several areas, including eastern North America (Newark Supergroup), the United Kingdom (St. Audrie’s Bay), Morocco (central High Atlas), Paris Basin (Montcornet), Turkey (Oyuklu), Argentina (Neuquen Basin), parts of the Colorado Plateau and adjacent areas of western North America (e.g., Moenave Formation). Despite cons...

The Permian-Triassic bottleneck has long been thought to have drastically altered the course of echinoid evolution, with the extinction of the entire echinoid stem group having taken place during the end-Permian mass extinction. The Early Triassic fossil record of echinoids is, however, sparse, and new fossils are paving the way for a revised interpretation of the evolutionary history of echino...

The first findings of Antracoptilidae (Paoliida) from the Late Permian/ Early Triassic of Africa, i.e. the new genus Afrocladus comprising A. pumilio sp. nov. and A. kenyaensis sp. nov., are described from the Mombasa Basin of Maji ya Chumvi Formation in Kenya (Duruma sandstones). Both diagnoses are based on wing venation pattern. Their occurrences close to the P-T boundary possibly indicate th...

Multiple chondritic meteorite fragments have been found in two sedimentary rock samples from an end-Permian bed at Graphite Peak in Antarctica. The Ni/Fe, Co/Ni, and P/Fe ratios in metal grains; the Fe/Mg and Mn/Fe ratios in olivine and pyroxene; and the chemistry of Fe-, Ni-, P-, and S-bearing oxide in the meteorite fragments are typical of CM-type chondritic meteorites. In one sample, the met...

In the last 500 million years, Earth's biota experienced periods of crises with extinctions on a large scale and significant turnover events, one them being Permian/Triassic boundary extinction event. The following Early Triassic was critical time marked by series biological environmental changes complex recovery pattern marine faunas ecosystems. Generally, animals plants respond to stress usin...

The end-Triassic (?201 Mya) records one of the five largest mass extinction events Phanerozoic. Extinction losses were coincident with large igneous province volcanism in form Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) and major carbon isotope excursions (CIEs), suggesting a link between these phenomena. Marine anoxia has been implicated as causal factor crisis, but there remains some uncertaint...

On the basis of a carbon isotopic record of both marine carbonates and organic matter from the Triassic-Jurassic boundary to the present, we modeled oxygen concentrations over the past 205 million years. Our analysis indicates that atmospheric oxygen approximately doubled over this period, with relatively rapid increases in the early Jurassic and the Eocene. We suggest that the overall increase...

Schaller et al. (Research Article, 18 March 2011, p. 1404) proposed that carbon dioxide (CO(2)) released by the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province eruptions over periods of about 20,000 years led to substantial increases of up to 2000 parts per million (ppm) in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (PCO(2)) near the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. Use of an atmosphere-ocean model coupled ...