Talk:Permian
From Academic Kids
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)
