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Late Permian

PALEOZOIC 543 to 248 Million Years Ago,

Before the DINOSAURS

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Jellyfish In the Precambrian we have the first mutlicellular animals. The Vendian period 680-543 Million years ago, includes the Edicara fauna of Australia. The animals are all soft bodied and fossils are only created in rare instances. The sea appears to have been inhabited by creatures that look like thin mattresses that were filter feeders. Stephen Gould in his book 'Its a Wonderful Life', suggested that these organisms were not directly ancestral to modern forms and were essentially a dead end. Punative ancestors of modern groups have been identified. I recommend the book highly, it is very readable but dated.

anomalcaris The Cambrian 520 million years ago, opens with a bang called the Cambrian explosion. The Burgess Shale in Western Canada has provided a glimpse into first flowering of complex life forms. It is the time of the Weird Wonders. All the known phylum of great families of animals are here plus the weird wonders, the designs that died out. The dominate carnivores are Anomalocaris and its close relatives. They appear to be unrelated to any living animals and are only one of surprises. The Cambrian and following Ordovician are characterized by the proliferation of Trilobites and a fauna dominated by filter feeders. The Royal Ontario Museum in Canada has produces a series of figures from the Burgess Shale. The choice of the Burgess shale as a subject for candy premiums by both the Cadbury Yowie and Kaiyodo Dino Tales series had been a pleasant surprise. I recommend the Discovery Channel program Origins: Battle for the Planet as a good introduction to the early seas.

sil In the Silurian and Devonian 409 million years ago, the fish begin to diversify and become more important. The first well known sharks are found. There is a general trend towards creatures that are mobile and active consumers as opposed to the sedentary filter feeders.

SRG produced the earliest prehistoric fish figure Dinichthys now better known as Dunkelostes. The French Starlux company produced a few early fish figures but the series has always been hard to obtain. Only recently with the Yowie and Kaiyodo Dino Tales series do we get many prehistoric fish figures.

In the Devonian and Carboniferous land flora and fauna develop and it is often referred to as the acnthostega age of amphibian. Paleozoic fauna at sea continues to decline as modern families evolve. The BBC documentary Chased by Sea Monsters has a nice Dunkelostes episode. The evolution of calcified bones is though to be related to spread of early vertebrates to fresh water environments.

In the Early Permian 286 million years ago, reptiles dominate the land. Dimetrodon the king of the Paleozoic toys lived in this time. Dimetrodon and its relative Sphenacodon were regular members of Marx Dinosaur play sets even though they are more closely related to mammals. While Sphenacodon has fallen on hard times being excluded from most dinosaur sets, Dimetrodon even shows up in the JP toy line though not the movie. With a little a paint both creatures can blend into modern sets it is a good Retro Classic project. Edaphosaurus the plant eating fin back and has not been reproduced often. The Starlux, Bullyland and Deiner are the only figures I know of for this animal.

In the Late Permian a modern land ecology starts to develop. The Russian Late Permian strata are traditionally divided into the Ufimian the Kazanian, and the Tartarian The period sees pulses of extinctions of old families and adaptive radiations of new families while the environment becomes increasingly arid. The oldest of the proto mammals sometimes called mammal like reptiles are found in the the Russian province of Kazan hence the name Kazanian. after an extinction the proto mammals diversified again in the Bradysaurus Tatarian. Known as the mammal like reptiles in older publications, the relatives of mammals dominated the Late Permian and survived into the Triassic to produce mammals. While Moschops was a stalwart of Marx, MPC and more recently Playskool this period has largely been ignored except by Starlux and the JP toy line. Ral Partha did a couple of theraspid figures. Again it is the new candy premiums like the Choco Egg Dino Tales that have produced the most interesting figures. The Permian and the Paleozoic end with the greatest of all extinctions. The Period ends with the greatest Extinction known. Recommend reading is Dr Bob Bakkers Dinosaur Heresies for a good feel of the period. The BBC documentary Before the Dinosaurs and the Discovery Miracle Planet visit the whole paleozoic.