Correlating the continental end-Permian biome collapse (Lopingian) across eastern Australia

• Main Author: Mays, Chris
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Naturhistoriska riksmuseet, Enheten för paleobiologi 2022
• Subjects: end-Permian extinction; Triassic palynology; flora; palaeoclimate; Other Earth and Related Environmental Sciences; Annan geovetenskap och miljövetenskap; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:nrm:diva-4886

The end-Permian extinction event (EPE; 252 million years ago) was the most extreme mass extinction in Earth’s history (Stanley, 2016) and has been linked to rapid, planet-scale warming (Frank et al., 2021). The Australian stratigraphic record offers a globally unique opportunity to explore the severity and pace of terrestrial carbon sinks in response to this hyperthermal event across a broad latitudinal range. The Bowen, Sydney and Tasmania basins of eastern Australia collectively represent a ~2500 km north-south transect (Fig. 1) of contemporaneous continental depositional environments and floras during the Late Permian and Early Triassic (palaeolatitudes:~45–75°S). From the Sydney Basin, our team has built a robust chronostratigraphic framework (Fig.2), with which we have reconstructed the timeline of continental environmental and floral changes in the region (Fielding etal., 2019, 2021; Mays et al., 2020, 2021b; Vajda et al., 2020; McLoughlin et al., 2021). More recently, we have successfully applied our chronostratigraphic scheme to the Bowen Basin to constrain the ages of the climatic and floristic changes (Frank et al., 2021). The poorly studied Tasmania Basin is the highest palaeolatitude Permian–Triassic basin of Australia, and can provide chronostratigraphic and biogeographic links between Antarctica and the other basins of eastern Australia.