🦗 Permian rock layers contain several of the fossil record’s greatest evolutionary enigmas. These rocks are found directly above Carboniferous strata, which I explained in the previous two articles in this series. One enigma is the famous and hotly debated Permian-Triassic (P-T) mass extinction that included a dramatic shift in plant fossils, along with huge disappearances of marine life in the fossil record and, to a lesser degree, terrestrial creatures. The other enigma is the sudden appearan