title: Lethally hot temperatures during the Early Triassic greenhouse.
abstract: Global warming is widely regarded to have played a contributing role in numerous past biotic crises. Here, we show that the end-Permian mass extinction coincided with a rapid temperature rise to exceptionally high values in the Early Triassic that were inimical to life in equatorial latitudes and suppressed ecosystem recovery. This was manifested in the loss of calcareous algae, the near-absence of fish in equatorial Tethys, and the dominance of small taxa of invertebrates during the thermal maxima. High temperatures drove most Early Triassic plants and animals out of equatorial terrestrial ecosystems and probably were a major cause of the end-Smithian crisis.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Geobiology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China. eeys@leeds.ac.uk
authors.forename: Yadong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Michael M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Joachimski
authors.forename: Paul B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Wignall
authors.forename: Chunbo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: Yanlong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Haishui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Lina
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xulong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lai
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D059001:Aquatic Organisms; D053476:Extinction, Biological; D057232:Global Warming; D017752:Greenhouse Effect; D006358:Hot Temperature