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Sea life bounced back fast after the ‘mother of mass extinctions’

A treasure trove of fossils uncovered in China challenges the idea that marine animals took millions of years to recover from the world’s worst die-off.
  1. Dyani Lewis
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An exceptionally well-preserved trove of fossils uncovered in southern China represents a complex marine ecosystem from the dawn of modern life, according to a study published in Science today1. The organisms of the Guiyang biota lived around 251 million years ago, just one million years after the world’s worst known mass-extinction event, at the end of the Permian period. This suggests that ecosystems recovered much more rapidly than previously thought.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00383-9

References

  1. Dai, X. et al. Science 379, 567–572 (2023).

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  2. Chen, Z.-Q. & Benton, M. J. Nature Geosci. 5, 375–383 (2012).

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