A non-amniote perspective on the recovery from the end-Permian extinction at high latitudes: paleobiology of Early Triassic temnospondyls from Antarctica

The research supported by this grant centers on the evolution of fossil amphibians (temnospondyls) from the Early Triassic, a crucial time interval in the evolution of life on Earth following the end-Permian mass extinction, specifically based on fossil material from Antarctica, a high-latitude paleoenvironment that may have served as a refuge for tetrapods across the extinction event. Previous records of temnospondyls, mostly reported several decades ago, are highly fragmentary, and their original interpretations are considered dubious or demonstrably erroneous by contemporary workers.

The Antarctic record of temnospondyls is of great import in understanding the biotic recovery in terrestrial environments for several reasons. Firstly, temnospondyls, like amphibians today, were highly speciose in the Triassic but were also some of the most susceptible to environmental perturbations and instability. Therefore, temnospondyls provide key insights into the paleoenvironmental conditions, either in place of or alongside other lines of data.