For more than 60 million years they were Earth's dominant land vertebrates ... that synapsids took a savage hit at the end of the Permian. Plants were also hit by the extinction.

(Image Credit: Yang Dinghua) Artistic reconstruction of the terrestrial ecological landscape before the end Permian mass extinction based on fossil palynomorphs, plants , and tetrapods recovered, as ...

"Life on Earth had to adjust to repeated changes in climate and the carbon cycle for several million years after the Permian-Triassic Boundary. "Our study links land plant macrofossil assemblages ...