The end of the Early Permian (Cisuralian) saw a major faunal turnover, with most lineages of primitive "pelycosaur" synapsids becoming extinct, being replaced by more advanced therapsids.

[17] Prior to the introduction of the term Permian, rocks of equivalent age in Germany had been named the Rotliegend and Zechstein, and in Great Britain as the New Red Sandstone.

Murchison identified "vast series of beds of marl, schist, limestone, sandstone and conglomerate" that succeeded Carboniferous strata in the region.

[25] Glenister and colleagues in 1992 proposed a tripartite scheme, advocating that the Roadian-Capitanian was distinct from the rest of the Late Permian, and should be regarded as a separate epoch.

All GSSPs for the Permian are based around the first appearance datum of specific species of conodont, an enigmatic group of jawless chordates with hard tooth-like oral elements.

[28] The Cisuralian Series is named after the strata exposed on the western slopes of the Ural Mountains in Russia and Kazakhstan.

Albert Auguste Cochon de Lapparent in 1900 had proposed the "Uralian Series", but the subsequent inconsistent usage of this term meant that it was later abandoned.

[28] The Guadalupian Series is named after the Guadalupe Mountains in Texas and New Mexico, where extensive marine sequences of this age are exposed.

[28] The Wordian was named in reference to the Word Formation by Johan August Udden in 1916, Glenister and Furnish in 1961 was the first publication to use it as a chronostratigraphic term as a substage of the Guadalupian Stage.

[32] The GSSP for the base of the Wordian is located in Guadalupe Pass, Texas, within the sediments of the Getaway Limestone Member of the Cherry Canyon Formation, which was ratified in 2001.

The GSSP for the base of the Capitanian is located at Nipple Hill in the southeast Guadalupe Mountains of Texas, and was ratified in 2001, the beginning of the stage is defined by the first appearance of Jinogondolella postserrata.

Huang in 1932 raised the Lopingian to a series, including all Permian deposits in South China that overlie the Maokou Limestone.

[36][37] During the Permian, all the Earth's major landmasses were collected into a single supercontinent known as Pangaea, with the microcontinental terranes of Cathaysia to the east.

[38] A magmatic arc, containing Hainan on its southwesternmost end, began to form as Panthalassa subducted under the southeastern South China.

Three general areas are especially noted for their extensive Permian deposits—the Ural Mountains (where Perm itself is located), China, and the southwest of North America, including the Texas red beds.

At the start of the Permian, the Earth was still in the Late Paleozoic icehouse (LPIA), which began in the latest Devonian and spanned the entire Carboniferous period, with its most intense phase occurring during the latter part of the Pennsylvanian epoch.

[85] The rocks formed at that time were stained red by iron oxides, the result of intense heating by the sun of a surface devoid of vegetation cover.

At the close of the Permian, lycopod and equisete swamps reminiscent of Carboniferous flora survived only in Cathaysia, a series of equatorial islands in the Paleo-Tethys Ocean that later would become South China.

Primitive relatives of damselflies and dragonflies (Meganisoptera), which include the largest flying insects of all time, also declined during the Permian.

[95] Early Permian terrestrial faunas of North America and Europe were dominated by primitive pelycosaur synapsids including the herbivorous edaphosaurids, and carnivorous sphenacodontids, diadectids and amphibians.

The special adaptations of synapsids enabled them to flourish in the drier climate of the Permian and they grew to dominate the vertebrates.

Uncertain dating has led to suggestions that there is a global hiatus in the terrestrial fossil record during the late Kungurian and early Roadian, referred to as "Olson's Gap" that obscures the nature of the transition.

[107] Cynodonts, the group of therapsids ancestral to modern mammals, first appeared and gained a worldwide distribution during the Late Permian.

[126] The Gondwanan floristic region was dominated by Glossopteridales, a group of woody gymnosperm plants, for most of the Permian, extending to high southern latitudes.

The ecology of the most prominent glossopterid, Glossopteris, has been compared to that of bald cypress, living in mires with waterlogged soils.

[127] The tree-like calamites, distant relatives of modern horsetails, lived in coal swamps and grew in bamboo-like vertical thickets.

A mostly complete specimen of Arthropitys from the Early Permian Chemnitz petrified forest of Germany demonstrates that they had complex branching patterns similar to modern angiosperm trees.

[129] The oldest likely record of Ginkgoales (the group containing Ginkgo and its close relatives) is Trichopitys heteromorpha from the earliest Permian of France.

There is evidence that magma, in the form of flood basalt, poured onto the Earth's surface in what is now called the Siberian Traps, for thousands of years, contributing to the environmental stress that led to mass extinction.

Based on the amount of lava estimated to have been produced during this period, the worst-case scenario is the release of enough carbon dioxide from the eruptions to raise world temperatures five degrees Celsius.