Fossil discoveries in southern Africa reveal life before catastrophic Permian extinction

Fossil discoveries in southern Africa reveal life before catastrophic Permian extinction
by Clarence Oxford
Seattle WA (SPX) Aug 13, 2025
An international research team has spent more than 15 years unearthing fossils across southern Africa to better understand life in the Permian period, which began 299 million years ago and ended 252 million years ago in Earth's most severe mass extinction. Led by scientists from the University of Washington and the Field Museum of Natural History, the project identifies species that thrived in southern Pangea before the "Great Dying" eliminated about 70% of land species and an even greater proportion of marine life.

"This mass extinction was nothing short of a cataclysm for life on Earth, and changed the course of evolution," said Christian Sidor, UW professor of biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum. "But we lack a comprehensive view of which species survived, which didn't, and why. The fossils we have collected in Tanzania and Zambia will give us a more global perspective on this unprecedented period in our planet's natural history."

Sidor and Kenneth Angielczyk of the Field Museum co-edited a 14-paper series in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology published Aug. 7, detailing newly described Permian species from Africa, including saber-toothed predators, burrowing herbivores and a giant salamander-like amphibian. The work draws on excavations in Tanzania's Ruhuhu Basin and Zambia's Luangwa and Mid-Zambezi basins, along with earlier finds preserved in museum collections.

Beginning in 2007, the team made multiple month-long expeditions to these sites in partnership with Tanzanian and Zambian authorities. Researchers trekked long distances between field locations, stayed in villages or camped in the open, and occasionally encountered wildlife such as elephants. All fossils will be returned to their home countries after study.

The Permian capped the Paleozoic Era, a time when life that originated in the oceans expanded onto land, producing complex ecosystems. Diverse amphibians and reptile-like species inhabited environments from forests to dry valleys. The end-Permian extinction disrupted these systems and ushered in the Mesozoic Era, which saw dinosaurs, birds, flowering plants and mammals emerge.

While South Africa's Karoo Basin has long provided the most complete record of this period, fossil-rich basins in Tanzania and Zambia offer comparable preservation. The team's work represents the most extensive analysis of the region's pre- and post-extinction record to date.

Findings include new species of dicynodonts - small, tusked, beak-snouted herbivores that dominated late Permian landscapes - as well as new gorgonopsian predators and a temnospondyl amphibian. "We can now compare two different geographic regions of Pangea and see what was going on both before and after the end-Permian mass extinction," Sidor said. "We can really start to ask questions about who survived and who didn't."

Research Report:Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Volume 45, Issue sup1 (2025)