Best Permian
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Meganeuropsis permiana was a giant dragonfly that lived during the Permian Period approximately 290 million years ago. This extinct insect boasts an impressive wingspan of around 71 centimeters making it the largest known insect fossil discovered to date. Its size and unique morphology offer valuabl...
Helicoprion is an extinct genus of shark-like cartilaginous fish that lived during the Permian period, first named in 1899. Belonging to the order Eugeneodontida, this marine predator is famous for its bizarre anatomical feature: a symphyseal tooth whorl arranged in a continuous spiral. Because thei...
Christian Sidor is an American vertebrate paleontologist and biology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research focuses on the evolutionary transitions and fossil records of Permian and Triassic tetrapods. Sidor has conducted extensive paleontological fieldwork in Antarctica...
Kenneth Angielczyk is an American paleontologist at Chicago's Field Museum, noted for research on dicynodonts and the evolution of Permian synapsids.
Dimetrodon grandis is an extinct synapsid from the Early Permian of North America. It was a large terrestrial predator with differentiated teeth and elongated vertebral spines that supported a prominent sail along its back. Although frequently depicted alongside dinosaurs, Dimetrodon lived tens of m...
Jörg Fröbisch is a German vertebrate paleontologist associated with the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. His research concentrates on synapsids, the vertebrate lineage that includes mammals and their extinct relatives, with particular attention to Permian and Triassic therapsids. By studying their a...
Bruce S. Rubidge is a South African palaeontologist whose research focuses on therapsids and the Permian-Triassic fossil record of the Karoo Basin. He served as director of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand and contributed substantially to the biostratigraphy...
Glossopteris indica is a fossil species assigned to Glossopteris, a widespread genus of seed plants that flourished across Gondwana during the Permian Period. Its characteristic tongue-shaped leaves occur in rocks from India and other parts of the former southern supercontinent. The broad geographic...
Roger M. H. Smith is a South African paleontologist known for Karoo Basin research on therapsid taphonomy and the end-Permian mass extinction.
Helicoprion bessonowi was a Permian eugeneodont, an extinct cartilaginous fish related to sharks and chimaeras. Alexander Karpinsky named it in 1899 from a distinctive spiral arrangement of fossil teeth found in the Ural region of Russia. The position of this tooth whorl was debated for decades, but...
Sean Modesto is a Canadian vertebrate paleontologist at Cape Breton University, noted for studies of early reptiles and Permian parareptile evolution.
Ivan Yefremov was a Soviet paleontologist and science-fiction writer who introduced the term taphonomy in 1940 for the study of fossilization.
Mesosaurus tenuidens was a small aquatic reptile that lived during the Early Permian and is known from fossils in southern Africa and eastern South America. It had an elongated body, a long tail, and slender jaws containing numerous narrow teeth, adaptations associated with feeding in water. Its dis...
Inostrancevia alexandri is a large gorgonopsian therapsid from the Late Permian of European Russia. It was a predatory non-mammalian synapsid with an elongated skull, powerful jaws, and prominent saber-like upper canine teeth, while some reconstructed skulls exceed 50 centimeters in length. As one o...
Diplocaulus magnicornis is an extinct lepospondyl tetrapod from the Permian of North America, especially well represented by fossils from Texas. It is distinguished by long horn-like extensions projecting from the rear corners of the skull, creating a broad boomerang-shaped outline unlike that of mo...
Eryops megacephalus was a large temnospondyl tetrapod that lived in North America during the Early Permian. Adults could approach two metres in length and had a broad, heavily built skull, robust limbs, and numerous conical teeth suited to seizing prey. Abundant and comparatively complete fossils ha...
Edaphosaurus pogonias was a large plant-eating synapsid from the Early Permian of North America. It had a relatively small skull, a deep body, and elongated neural spines supporting a prominent dorsal sail; many of those spines carried distinctive lateral crossbars. Although superficially similar to...
Robert R. Reisz is a prominent Canadian paleontologist and a professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga. He specializes in the study of early amniote evolution, focusing extensively on the biology of Paleozoic and Mesozoic synapsids and reptiles. Reisz gained widespread recognition in the sc...
Lycaenops ornatus is an extinct gorgonopsian therapsid known from Late Permian rocks of South Africa's Karoo Basin. Like other gorgonopsians, it was a predatory non-mammalian synapsid with an elongated skull and enlarged, saber-like canine teeth adapted for seizing prey. Fossils of the species help...
Everett C. Olson was an American vertebrate paleontologist whose research concentrated on Permian terrestrial animals, especially early synapsids and other fossil vertebrates. As a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, he helped interpret changes in land-animal communities through...
Estemmenosuchus mirabilis is a large dinocephalian therapsid from the Middle Permian of what is now Russia. It is recognized by massive, outward-projecting bony structures on the skull, including prominent growths above and beside the head. As an early synapsid rather than a dinosaur, it helps docum...
Moschops capensis is a large, heavily built herbivorous therapsid from the middle Permian rocks of South Africa's Karoo Basin. It belonged to the dinocephalians, an early synapsid group that lived long before mammals and dinosaurs. Moschops is distinguished by a massively thickened skull roof, robus...
Cotylorhynchus romeri is the largest known caseian pelycosaur, a Permian herbivore from North America with a massive barrel-shaped body and disproportionately small head.
Late Permian reptile from Madagascar and Europe, among the earliest known gliding vertebrates, using elongated dermal rod-like structures to support a lateral gliding membrane.
Late Permian archosauromorph from Germany, one of the oldest known members of the archosauromorph lineage, formally described by H. von Meyer in 1832.
Ophiacodon mirus is an Early Permian synapsid from North America, one of the earliest large semi-aquatic predatory pelycosaurs in the vertebrate fossil record.
Gangamopteris cyclopteroides is a Permian Gondwanan plant closely related to Glossopteris but distinguished by its broad leaves lacking a defined midrib.
Late Permian neodiapsid reptile from Madagascar with semi-aquatic adaptations, sometimes proposed as a relative of the later sauropterygian marine reptiles.
A Paleozoic trilobite genus assigned to the order Proetida, known from marine deposits and contributing to the taxonomic understanding of late Paleozoic trilobite diversity.
