Geologic Time Scale Tourism Project - Essay Example

The period Permian which ended roughly 252 million years ago marked the end of the Palezonic era. It was immediately preceded by the Triassic period and immediately followed by the Carboniferous period. Evidence of the Permian period has been found in eastern part of Imperial Russia. During the Permian period the supercontinent (Pangea) was formed as different land masses joined together to form a single unit. The formation of Pangea occurred over a long period of time and ended with collision between Siberia-Kazakhstania, Laurasia, and China as noted by Kazlev (2002).

With the formation of one landmass, there water masses correspondingly joined to form one massive ocean called Panthalassa. As the supercontinent formed, the sea level dropped and warm shallow seas that existed at the time reduced in extent (Gradstein, Ogg & Smith, 2004). The supercontinent that was so formed took the shape of a giant pacman. The mouth of the “pacman” faced east, enclosing part of the ocean to form a smaller sea. A sea called the Tethys covered a major part of what now constitutes Central and Southern Europe.

The Zechstein sea which covered present time Europe was an extremely salty inland sea that existed in the Permian period. The extremely salty conditions that prevailed near and around the Zechstein sea only allowed a few plant species to thrive, mainly bivalves and brachiopods (Kazlev, 2002). Apart from the establishment of the supercontinent, super-ocean, and salty seas, the Permian period saw the establishment of a groups of mountains as a result of plate tectonics. During the Uralian Orogeny, for example, the Ural Mountains were formed as the Siberian plat Kazakhstania and Pangaea collided (Gradstein, Ogg & Smith, 2004).

At the beginning of the Permian era, the climate was extremely cold and many parts of the earth was covered in ice. However, the formation of Pangaea brought with it extreme climate and environmental changes owing to