ELT Collaborative Research: Causes and effects of the Permian-Triassic biotic crisis inferred from continental margin sections and modeling

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The end-Permian mass extinction (EPME) was the most severe biotic crisis in the past 540 million years of Earth history. This project aims to identify the timing, nature, and causes of paleoenvironmental stresses leading up to and following the EPME, focusing on well-exposed sedimentary successions exposed in eastern Australia, and supported by climate modelling studies. The project will integrate data from several disciplines to explore the hypotheses that a) the EPME was part of a longer-term crisis that followed earlier events in the Middle-Late Permian, b) the crisis was not manifested simultaneously across the paleolatitudes, and c) continental ecosystems responded to the crisis in different ways than marine ecosystems. Students will be trained and public displays will be developed at the University of Nebraska State Museum.The EPME has gained relevance as an example of an end-member ecological catastrophe that could potentially be replicated in the future. Coastal settings are among the most densely populated today, yet previous studies of the EPME have focused largely on oceanic and continental interior records. In investigating deposits that accumulated along ~2000 km of coastline spanning temperate to polar latitudes, the proposed project will improve understanding of the response of continental margins to rapid environmental change. This work will potentially transform understanding of the timeframes, driving mechanisms, global variability, and ultimate causes of the most severe global ecologic crisis of the Phanerozoic.