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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Interdisciplinary Climate Studies
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1520846

Comparison between plant fossil assemblages across the Permian-Triassic Boundary and simulated biomes

Provisionally accepted
Charline Ragon Charline Ragon 1Christian Vérard Christian Vérard 1Jérôme Kasparian Jérôme Kasparian 1Hendrik Nowak Hendrik Nowak 2,3Evelyn Kustatscher Evelyn Kustatscher 3Maura Brunetti Maura Brunetti 1*
  • 1 University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 2 University of Nottingham, Nottingham, England, United Kingdom
  • 3 Museum of Nature South Tyrol, Bozen, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Terrestrial ecosystems underwent extreme shifts in composition following the extensive degassing associated with the Siberian Traps near the Permian-Triassic Boundary (PTB). These climatic perturbations are recorded in land plant macrofossil assemblages, which reflect complex changes in major biomes at the stage level. In this study, we quantitatively compare the major biomes reconstructed from the plant macrofossil assemblage data with those derived from coupled climate-vegetation simulations across the PTB. We focus on five stages across the PTB, from the Wuchiapingian to the Anisian. Our findings indicate that a shift from a cold climatic state to one with a mean surface temperature approximately 10 • C higher is consistent with changes over time observed in plant biomes, as documented in macrofossil records. In contrast, vegetation patterns in the Induan stage suggest a strong variability and do not allow for a univocal attribution to a stable climate.

    Keywords: Permian-Triassic, Paleobiogeography, Plant fossils, modelling, Tipping, Climatic shift

    Received: 31 Oct 2024; Accepted: 07 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Ragon, Vérard, Kasparian, Nowak, Kustatscher and Brunetti. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Maura Brunetti, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

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