New research published today in Nature Communications suggests that during and following devastation of land plant communities at the end of the Permian period, rivers and lakes became hostile to life owing to the proliferation of toxic microbes. UConn Earth Sciences Professors Tracy Frank and Chris Fielding are among the team of geoscientists who generated the new results, which show that freshwater bodies repeatedly became “toxic soup” during this time, delaying recovery of the Early Triassic flora by millions of years.
Link to the UConn press release
