Chinese Paleontology Site Shows Full Ecosystem Recovery From Permian Extinction Took 10 Million Yrs

[hatrack]

250 million years ago there was a world wide extinction event where 96% of all marine species were exterminated. Most of this event is unknown. Only one in every ten species survived, and these formed the basis for the recovery of life in the subsequent time period, called the Triassic. A new fossil site — at Luoping in Yunnan Province — provides a new window on that recovery, and indicates that it took about 10 million years for a fully-functioning new ecosystem to develop. During that time window, the new ecosystem evolved and changed until it stabilized.

Marine invertebrates suffered the greatest losses during the Permian extinction. In the intensively-sampled south China sections at the Permian boundary, for instance, 280 out of 329 marine invertebrate genera disappear within the final 2 sedimentary zones containing conodonts from the Permian. The Permian had great diversity in insect and other invertebrate species, including the largest insects ever to have existed. The end-Permian is the only known mass extinction of insects, with eight or nine insect orders becoming extinct and ten more greatly reduced in diversity.

The spectacular haul of 20,000 fossils from a hillside in southwestern China represents the first discovery of a complete ecosystem which bounced back after life was nearly wiped off the face of the planet 252m years ago. The small town of Luoping in China lies in the relatively underdeveloped eastern part of Yunnan province. Luoping is dominated by karst features with small basins among mountain ranges. This area was a sea in Permian times.

"The Luoping site dates from the Middle Triassic and contains one of the most diverse marine fossil records in the world," said Professor Benton. "We can tell that we’re looking at a fully recovered ecosystem because of the diversity of predators, most notably fish and reptiles. It’s a much greater diversity than what we see in the Early Triassic — and it’s close to pre-extinction levels."


EDIT

http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/42152

[wilt the stilt]

1. not possible

earth is 6,000 years old. Ask Coburn et al.

[villager]

2. "What are tree huggers complaining about!? It'll only take a couple million yrs to recover from us!"

I can see the spin now...

[damntexdem]

3. Well, see, global climate change isn't so bad after all.

A mere ten million years and all of the damage done by homo sapiens will be fixed. ;-)