Drastic global climate change during the Permian resulted in two of the greatest mass extinction events of all time, one around 260 Ma ago and the other around 252 Ma ago. Arguably the best record of these events on land is preserved in the main Karoo Basin of South Africa, which was situated in higher latitudes (~60° S) at those times. Because of the relatively poorer fossil record from lower (0-15°) palaeolatitudes, latitudinal differences in faunal assemblages, and lack of precise radiometric dates, global applicability of extinction and faunal recovery patterns observed in the MKB has long remained elusive; we simply lacked the necessary data. As such, stratigraphic correlations between basins are tenuous. Moreover, it is not known whether the terrestrial expression of the two greatest mass extinction events of the Permian, and subsequent ecosystem recovery, are preserved in western Europe.
Palaeontological and geological work undertaken in the past two decades have highlighted the presence of long continental successions ranging from the late Carboniferous to the Middle Triassic from lower palaeolatitudes in several European (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Scotland) and north African (Morocco, Niger) basins. Most importantly, these have yielded a diversity of vertebrate and invertebrate body and trace fossils, which provide valuable new insights into life at lower palaeolatitudes during the Permian. Drawing on the geological, geochronological, and palaeontological advances and work undertaken during the past two decades in the Pyrenees and Lodéve basins (Spain and France) and the main Karoo Basin (South Africa), supplemented by new data collected during fieldwork, ExtinctRecov aims to, for the first time, combine palaeontological, sedimentological, stratigraphical and geochronological data to correlate and compare the Permian-Triassic Spanish and French basins and the main Karoo Basin, and provide valuable new insights into life at lower palaeolatitudes during the Permian and Triassic.
Building upon the results of previous studies and expanding to new theoretical and methodological questions, the project aims to fill the gap of two critical aspects:
1. Correlation of middle-to-late Permian deposits from the Pyrenees basins, Spain and nearby French basins, with coeval deposits from higher latitudes (main Karoo Basin).
2. Low-palaeolatitude Permian tetrapod assemblages and their surrounding environments, in association with climatic changes, and how they changed through time.
