Plants fought for millions of years after Earth’s worst mass extinction event

The world witnessed catastrophic climate changes 250 million years ago, undergoing one of the most extreme periods of warming in Earth’s history called the “End-Permian Event”. Scientists delving into understanding how the ecosystem responded to this now have answers.

A team of scientists from the University College Cork (UCC), the University of Connecticut, and the Natural History Museum of Vienna got together and revealed that plants underwent a lengthy process to adapt and withstand the changes for millions of years. They have published their findings in the GSA Bulletin.

During the worst mass extinction event on Earth, more than 80 per cent of ocean species were wiped out. However, life on land reacted differently.

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By examining fossil plants and rocks from eastern Australia’s Sydney Basin, the team discovered that plants faced the challenges of climate change and recovered most wonderfully.

Worst mass extinction and plants

Right after the End-Permian catastrophe, conifers were the ones to take over the land. They faced the climate for several years before bowing down in front of the much higher temperatures during the “Late Smithian Thermal Maximum”. Tough, shrubby plants replaced them during this hot period.

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This period lasted for about 700,000 years and for the entirety of this period, large trees and other plants could not make a place for themselves.

A cooler period on Earth emerged

Their struggle finally ended with the advent of the “Smithian-Spathian Event”, a relatively cooler period. Unusual plants called “seed ferns” flourished during this period and forests began to emerge. 

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For millions of years after this, these green elements dominated the landscape of Earth, spreading their roots into the Mesozoic era when dinosaurs ruled the planet.

Extinction and a new ecosystem

This is when finally the plants and the ecosystem returned to what it was like before the end-Permian collapse. However, while it looked the same, the plant species were different from before.  “The term ‘recovery’ can be misleading. Forests recover eventually, but extinction is forever,” says Dr Chris Mays, Leader of the Mass Extinction Group at University College Cork.

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Importance of plants

Today, once again the world is facing an environmental crisis and the latest research can tell us how the current ecosystem might react to it. “This research highlights how crucial plants are, not just as the base of land food chains, but also as natural carbon sinks that stabilize Earth’s climate,” explains UCC researcher, Marcos Amores, the study’s lead author. 

The world has seen it before and is on the verge of it happening once again, and the impact will likely last hundreds of thousands of years.