Eons: Life and Death on Pangea

In the Late Carboniferous Period, predatory amphibians and giant arthropods ruled the swamps. But ancient seed plants and amniotes were evolving adaptations to drier climates. These will help them thrive on Pangea in the Permian Period.

The first herbivorous vertebrates evolve on the side of the amniote family tree leading to mammals. Alongside them come apex predators, like Dimetrodon. But the Early Permian Period ends in a mystery: is it an extinction or a fossil gap?

Life in the Middle Permian Period flourished. Reef complexes stretched for hundreds of kilometers in what's now the Texas desert, while strange mammal-relatives and huge reptiles thrived on land. But this epoch ends in an extinction.

In the Late Permian Period, increasingly mammal-like traits were gradually emerging in our ancient relatives. The first saber-teeth and tusks evolved, and our ancestors, the cynodonts, appeared, all before the time of the dinosaurs.

The Permian Period ended with the biggest mass extinction of all time; more than 80% of species vanished. It altered the course of evolution in ways that we can still feel. And it was caused by a rapidly changing climate.

Around 250 million years ago, at the dawn of the Triassic Period, life on Earth was devastated. Eventually, the survivors of the Permian were replaced by new ecosystems. The age of reptiles was beginning.