[Rockhounds] Refuge from the worst mass extinction in Earth's history discovered fossilized in China

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

The mass extinction that killed 80% of life on Earth 250 million years ago
may not have been quite so disastrous for plants, new fossils hint.
Scientists have identified a refuge in China
<https://www.livescience.com/tag/china> where it seems that plants
weathered the planet's worst die-off.

The end-Permian mass extinction, also known as the "Great Dying," took
place 251.9 million years ago. At that time, the supercontinent Pangea was
in the process of breaking up, but all land on Earth was still largely
clustered together, with the newly formed continents separated by shallow
seas. An enormous eruption from a volcanic system called the Siberian Traps
seem to have pushed carbon dioxide levels to extremes: A *2021 study*
<https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=92X1590019&xcust=livescience_us_3733051236067308782&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41467-021-22298-7&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.livescience.com%2Fplanet-earth%2Ffossils%2Frefuge-from-the-worst-mass-extinction-in-earths-history-discovered-fossilized-in-china>
estimated
that atmospheric CO2 got as high as 2,500 parts per million (ppm) in this
period, compared with current levels of 425 ppm. This caused global warming
and ocean acidification, leading to a massive collapse of the ocean
ecosystem.

The situation on land is far hazier. Only a handful of places around the
world have rock layers containing fossils from land ecosystems at the end
of the Permian and beginning of the Triassic.

A new study of one of these spots — located in what is now northeastern
China —revealed a refuge where the ecosystem remained relatively healthy
despite the Great Dying. In this place, seed-producing gymnosperm forests
continued to grow, complemented by spore-producing ferns.

"At least in this place, we don't see mass extinction of plants," study
co-author *Wan Yang* <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wan-Yang-2/2>, a
professor of geology and geophysics at the Missouri University of Science
and Technology, told Live Science.

The finding, published Wednesday (March 12) in the journal *Science
Advances* <https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ads5614>, adds weight to the idea
that the Great Dying was more complicated on land than in the seas, Yang
said.

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/fossils/refuge-from-the-worst-mass-extinction-in-earths-history-discovered-fossilized-in-china