COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Vertebrate Extinction and Recovery Patterns in the Karoo Basin Across the Permo/Triassic Boundary, South Africa

两亿五千万年的二叠纪末期的大灭绝是地球历史上最严重的一次，据估计，当时生活在地球上的所有物种中有80%-90%灭绝了。到目前为止，还没有发现任何被接受的机制。这项研究将通过从南非卡鲁盆地收集大量脊椎动物化石，并将它们的出现与测量的地层剖面联系起来，来探索二叠纪末陆地生物灭绝的速度和模式。它们消失的时间框架将使用磁性地层学进行校准。由此产生的数据应该表明，在非海洋环境中，物种灭绝是迅速的还是缓慢的，从而提供了原因的线索。它还应该表明陆地上的物种灭绝是否与海洋中的物种灭绝同步。

9903382WardThe mass extinction at the end of the 250 million-year-old Permian Period was the most consequential in Earth history, causing an estimated 80-90% of all species then living on Earth to die out. To date, no accepted mechanism has been discovered. This research will explore the tempo and pattern of extinction among land life at the end of the Permian by collecting large numbers of vertebrate fossils from the Karoo Basin of South Africa, and tying their occurrence to measured stratigraphic sections. The time frame of their disappearance will be calibrated using magnetostratigraphy. The resulting data should show whether the extinction was rapid or slow in non-marine environments, and thus provide clues to causation. It should also show whether the extinctions on land were synchronous with those in the sea.