About 252 million years ago the largest extinction in history happened at the end of the Permian period. About 90% of marine life disappeared in a relatively short period and so far paleontologists believed that it took around 8-9 million years before, in the Triassic period, large predators reappeared. Now a study of a group of paleontologists led by Torsten Scheyer and Carlo Romano of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, claims that new predators quickly emerged at the beginning of the Triassic.

The apex predators, which are the predators at the top of the food chain in their ecosystem, are essential to maintain its stability operating a brutal natural selection among their prey allowing only the survival of the fittest. The research of Swiss paleontologists, along with colleagues from the University of Utah, USA, focused on these apex predators.

The conclusions of the research are surprising given that the paleontologists inferred from the distribution of marine vertebrate predators and their size from early to middle Triassic that apex predators had resurfaced in a relatively short time after the great extinction at the end of the Permian.

The apex predators changed at the end of the Permian: before the great extinction they were fishes, subsequently other types of predators such as some species of amphibians emerged. Another extinction occurred about two million years later, leading to further changes in the fauna. The consequence was that among the apex predators aquatic reptiles emerged such as the Askeptosaurus italicus (photo ©Ghedoghedo).

The point is that over the course of several million years between the end of the Permian and the early part of the Triassic there were different apex predators but the role of large predators remained the same. Until now, paleontologists have generally believed that predators became bigger and bigger from the early to the middle Triassic but an analysis of the various predators existed in that period suggests that there were always large predators.

Our knowledge of this period so far in the past grows over time thanks to the discovery of new fossils and more and more sophisticated geological analyzes. The result is a better understanding of a crucial period in the history of life on Earth, whose events have heavily influenced the subsequent development of life forms. This understanding of the past may also help us better understand the possible consequences of today’s climate changes.

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