Mega El Niño instigated the end-Permian mass extinction.

The ultimate driver of the end-Permian mass extinction is a topic of much debate. Here, we used a multiproxy and paleoclimate modeling approach to establish a unifying theory elucidating the heightened susceptibility of the Pangean world to the prolonged and intensified El Niño events leading to an extinction state. As atmospheric partial pressure of carbon dioxide doubled from about 410 to about 860 ppm (parts per million) in the latest Permian, the meridional overturning circulation collapsed, the Hadley cell contracted, and El Niños intensified.

Taphonomy and palaeoecology of Late Triassic (Carnian) ammonoid concentrations from the Taurus Mountains, Turkey.

The deposits of the Carnian Kasımlar Formation within the Taurus Platform Units of south-western Turkey represent an important archive of a Late Triassic ecosystem. New palaeontological information was obtained by analysing the mass occurrence, located within the Kasımlar Formation and named after the Lower Carnian (Julian) ammonoid genus . This is the dominant taxon (> 94%) within the mass occurrence: nearly 775 million ammonoids and 50 million gastropods were extrapolated for the whole extension (at least 5 km) of the beds.