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A global group of paleontologists has dedicated over 15 years to excavating and analyzing fossils from Africa to enhance our comprehension of the Permian, a phase in Earth’s timeline that commenced 299 million years ago and concluded 252 million years ago with the planet’s most extensive and catastrophic mass extinction. Spearheaded by scholars from the University of Washington and the Field Museum of Natural History, the team is pinpointing the species that thrived in the southern Pangea — the planet’s singular supercontinent at that time — right before the so-called “Great Dying” decimated about 70% of terrestrial species and an even larger percentage of marine ones.

“This mass extinction represented an unparalleled catastrophe for life on Earth, profoundly altering the trajectory of evolution,” remarked Christian Sidor, a UW biology professor and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the UW Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture. “However, we currently lack a detailed understanding of which species survived, which did not, and the reasons behind it. The fossils we have gathered in Tanzania and Zambia will furnish us with a broader viewpoint on this extraordinary epoch in our planet’s natural history.”

Sidor and Kenneth Angielczyk, curator of paleomammalogy at the Field Museum, are co-editors of a 14-article series released on Aug. 7 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, which highlights the team’s recent findings regarding the diverse array of animals that inhabited Permian Africa. These discoveries encompass saber-toothed predators, burrowing foragers, and a sizable, salamander-like organism.

All of these discoveries were unearthed in three basins across southern Africa: the Ruhuhu Basin in southern Tanzania, the Luangwa Basin in eastern Zambia, and the Mid-Zambezi Basin in southern Zambia. Most were identified by team members during multiple month-long excavation ventures to the area over the preceding 17 years. Others consisted of assessments of specimens unearthed decades earlier that had been preserved in museum collections.

“These regions of Zambia and Tanzania yield remarkably beautiful fossils from the Permian,” stated Sidor. “They are providing us with an unprecedented perspective of terrestrial life just prior to the mass extinction.”

Beginning in 2007, Sidor and his team, which included UW students and postdoctoral researchers, made five visits to the Ruhuhu Basin and four to the Mid-Zambezi and Luangwa basins, all in collaboration with the Tanzanian and Zambian governments. The researchers journeyed between field sites that were miles apart to gather fossils. They resided in villages or camped outdoors — once awakening during the night to the ground-shaking footsteps of a nearby herd of elephants. All fossils collected by the team will be returned to Tanzania and Zambia after researchers finalize their analyses.

The Permian signifies the conclusion of what paleontologists refer to as the Paleozoic Era. During this epoch, animal life — which initially developed in Earth’s oceans — began to inhabit land, leading to the emergence of intricate terrestrial ecosystems. By the Permian, a varied array of amphibian and reptile-like beings roamed environments that ranged from nascent forests to arid valleys. The end-Permian mass extinction — whose exact origins scientists continue to deliberate — annihilated numerous ecosystems and heralded the onset of the Mesozoic Era, which witnessed the evolution of dinosaurs, alongside the first birds, flowering plants, and mammals.

For several decades, scientists’ most solid understanding of the Permian, the Great Dying, and the initiation of the Mesozoic era stemmed from the Karoo Basin in South Africa, which possesses a nearly complete fossil record of the epochs preceding and succeeding the mass extinction. However, starting in the 1930s, paleontologists recognized that basins in Tanzania and Zambia host fossil records spanning this timeframe that are almost as pristine as that of the Karoo. The excavation expeditions led by Sidor, Angielczyk, and their collaborators embody the most extensive analysis to date of the region’s fossil record from before and after the Great Dying. In 2018, they published a detailed examination of the post-Permian creatures from the Ruhuhu and Luangwa basins. These recent studies delve deeper into the Permian.

“The quantity of specimens we’ve located in Zambia and Tanzania is so substantial and their condition so exceptional that we can conduct species-level comparisons to findings made by paleontologists in South Africa,” noted Sidor. “I am not aware of any better location on Earth for obtaining adequate
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This timeframe provides a foundation to form such comprehensive assertions and distinctions.

The group’s research documents several novel species of dicynodonts. These diminutive, burrowing, reptilian-like herbivores first emerged during the mid-Permian. By the epoch of the mass extinction, dicynodonts — many characterized by a beak-like snout featuring two small tusks likely beneficial for burrowing — were the principal plant consumers on land. The team’s discoveries also encompass multiple new species of large, saber-toothed predators known as gorgonopsians, in addition to a newly identified temnospondyl, a sizable amphibian resembling a salamander.

“We can now analyze two distinct geographic areas of Pangea and observe the developments both prior to and subsequent to the end-Permian mass extinction,” remarked Sidor. “We can truly begin to inquire about which species endured and which did not.”

Alongside the UW and the Field Museum, the group comprises scholars from the University of Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, Idaho State University, the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, Carleton University, the University of Southern California, the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, the Iziko South African Museum, Southern Methodist University, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, the Museum for Natural History in Berlin, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Oklahoma, the National Heritage Conservation Commission in Lusaka, Virginia Tech, and the Chipembele Wildlife Education Center in Mfume, Zambia. Seven of these academics are former UW postdoctoral researchers, doctoral candidates, or undergraduate scholars. The research was sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society.

For additional information, reach out to Sidor at [email protected].

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