Talk:Permian

For a student, it is very nice to learn the faunal stages in various names. Thanks.

Better check the external links for updates. Are the faunal stages in this entry the most current ones, you geology heads?Wetman 02:45, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ah, the Late Permian, my current favorite geological period! Bored with dinosaurs? Check out the Permian. Someday I'm going to write an article here about it. The animal life then wasn't as big or as spectacular as in the Mesozoic, but it was much more grotesque. The dominant land predators were cat-to-lion-sized therapsid 'reptiles' sporting huge saber fangs, hand-like feet, a scary sprawling posture from which they could probably rise to an even more scary scrambling run as they came after you. These were the gorgonopsians and the cynognaths. Not only that, but these animals were probably warm-blooded, probably had color vision, and they lived during the several ice ages, so you can visualize them sporting colorful fur coats with manes, frills, 'snowshoes,' the whole works. Herbivores were even weirder, with antlers, beaks, tusks and horns, yow! The landscape must have been eerie with no grass to control erosion, cycads covered with snow, ferns the size of trees. Tropical jungles, snow-capped mountains, lagoons, deserts, glaciers! Makes you wonder why the Late Permian is so neglected by paleontological artists. I'm only an amateur, but I hope to do something about this someday, if I live long enough. Also: the map of Gondwananaland sure looks like Tolkien's Middle Earth.

"Unstable" ecosystem?

"...but the ecosystem was still comparativly unstable. " Unstable ecosystems do not endure. A better paleoecologist than I should vet this statement and make sense out of it. --Wetman 22:06, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Subdivisions

I changed this to reflect ICS terminology. There is no such thing, formally, as Early or Late Permian. --Geologyguy 15:29, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[1] doesn't seem to agree with you Fornadan (t) 16:38, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Certainly there will be different versions and usages. Put it back if you want, I won't argue (not too big a deal)... but the ICS scale I have does not use them. Cheers Geologyguy 21:24, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Ambiguous sentence

Does anyone know what the sentence:

On an individual level, perhaps as many as 99.5% of separate organisms died as a result of the event.

is supposed to mean? Does it mean 'individual organisms'? Is so, I would imagine that 100% of individuals alive at that time are now dead. The extinction 'event' could well have taken place over a period of millions of years, couldn't it? Ashmoo 03:18, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Pretty unclear, isn't it? I'd guess it means that for a given species, 99.5% of the members (individual animals) of that species died, even when the entire species did not go extinct. But, since there is no reliable source, and it is confusing, I would vote to remove the line. Shall we see if others agree? Cheers Geologyguy 03:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Why not substitute several sourced quotes giving a clear and forcefulimpression of the extent of the damage? I'll add a Notes section; <ref></ref> html will drop the name, title, date, page down into the Notes. --Wetman 10:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

why the name?

There doesn't seem to be any discussion of why this period is named "Permian". I was taught that is was named so because many fossils from this period are found in the Texas "Permian Basin", but the article on the basin claims it is named after the Permian period. I have a hard time believing anything here in Texas is named after a scientific concept.