Our speaker at the May 12th general meeting will be Dr. Ken Angielczyk from the Field Museum. The title of his talk is:

 

“Tropical Permian Pangaea: Cradle of Biodiversity, Museum, or Both?”

A new early Permian continental tetrapod fauna from South America in tropical Western Gondwana sheds new light on patterns of tetrapod distribution.  Northeastern Brazil hosted an extensive lacustrine system inhabited by a unique community of temnospondyl amphibians and reptiles that considerably expand the known temporal and geographic ranges of key subgroups. These findings demonstrate that tetrapod groups common in later Permian and Triassic temperate communities were already present in tropical Gondwana by the early Permian (Cisuralian). This new fauna constitutes a new biogeographic province with North American affinities and clearly demonstrates that tetrapod dispersal into Gondwana was already underway at the beginning of the Permian.