A suite of ice-rafted dropstones and glendonites throughout the Permian succession of eastern Australia indicates the cold climate associated with the late Paleozoic ice age persisted longest in this part of Gondwana. Paradoxically, these cold climate indicators are preserved in transgressive and highstand facies and formed at mid to high latitudes at a time when paleofloral and sedimentologica...

Although numerous studies have examined morphological diversification during major radiations of marine taxa, much less attention has been paid to terrestrial radiations. Here, we examine rates of character change over phylogeny and over time for Palaeozoic limbed tetrapods. Palaeozoic tetrapods show significant decreases in rates of character change whether the rate is measured per sampled cla...

The ultimate cause(s) of the end-Permian mass extinction (∼252 Ma ago) has been disputed. A complex interplay various effects, rather than a single, universal killing mechanism, were most likely involved. Climate warming as consequence greenhouse gas emissions by contemporaneous Siberian Traps volcanism is widely accepted an initial trigger. Synergetic effects global include increasing stratifi...

The initial stages of evolution of Diapsida (the large clade that includes not only snakes, lizards, crocodiles and birds, but also dinosaurs and numerous other extinct taxa) is clouded by an exceedingly poor Palaeozoic fossil record. Previous studies had indicated a 38 Myr gap between the first appearance of the oldest diapsid clade (Araeoscelidia), ca 304 million years ago (Ma), and that of i...

Therocephalians were a speciose clade of nonmammalian therapsids whose ecological diversity and survivorship of the end-Permian mass extinction offer the potential to investigate the evolution of growth patterns across the clade and their underlying influences on post-extinction body size reductions, or 'Lilliput effects'. We present a phylogenetic survey of limb bone histology and growth patte...

The history of the appearance and evolution of the suture, one of the major structural elements of the shells of ammonoids (a subclass of Cephalopoda), is briefly discussed. Its morphology is considered in the Devonian Anarcestida, the first members of which are very similar to the ancestral Bactritoidea, in the Late Devonian Clymeniida, the Devonian–Permian Tornoceratida, the Carboniferous–Per...

Strata exposed near Tabbowa Tank, Tabbowa Basin, western Sri Lanka have yielded the first representatives of the distinctive Permian Glossopteris flora from that country. The assemblage includes gymnosperm foliage attributable to Glossopteris raniganjensis, roots referable to Vertebraria australis, seeds assigned to Samaropsis sp., sphenophyte axes (Paracalamites australis) and foliage (Sphenop...

A mid-Permian (Guadalupian epoch) extinction event at approximately 260 Ma has been mooted for two decades. This is based primarily on invertebrate biostratigraphy of Guadalupian-Lopingian marine carbonate platforms in southern China, which are temporally constrained by correlation to the associated Emeishan Large Igneous Province (LIP). Despite attempts to identify a similar biodiversity crisi...

Abstract Detrital zircon geochronology has rapidly evolved into a powerful tool for reconstructing the assembly and dispersal processes of supercontinents. Currently, history Gondwanaland remains highly controversial. Here we focus on detrital Gondwana (Carboniferous–Permian Kokaha Diamictite Jurassic–Cretaceous Sapt Koshi Formation) post-Gondwana (Miocene Tamrang sequences Lesser Himalaya in e...

A detailed magnetostratigraphic study, linked to a new latest Permian U–Pb ID-TIMS age, was undertaken on the continental Shichuanhe section (SCH) in North China order provide magnetic polarity scale for Late Permian–early Middle Triassic interval. Tilt-corrected mean directions of characteristic remanent magnetization pass reversal test and correspond site paleolatitude 18.1°N during Early Tri...