Guiyang biota

The Guiyang biota comes from the northern margin of the Nanpanjang Basin, on the eastern side of the Tethys Ocean. The presence of a rich biota in a near-Equatorial paleolatitude implies that, immediately after the Permian extinction event, global temperatures must have been tolerable for life even at the tropics - it was previously thought that the greenhouse climate would have reduced or eliminated biodiversity at low latitudes. The estimated sea surface temperature was about 35 °C. ==Age==

The Guiyang biota belongs to the late Dienerian, a subsection of the Induan period of early Triassic.The biostratigraphy evidenced by the Radioceras ammonoids and the Neospathodus cristagalli and Neospathodus dieneri conodonts is consistent with the Dienerian, and uranium–lead zircon dating confirms the strata span about 110,000 years, between 250.83 and 250.72 millions of years ago, 1.08 millions of years after the Permian extinction. ==Ecosystem==

Species The biota is rich in bony fishes. Teeth of Chondrichthyes are also present. Two coelacanth species, ranging between 50 and 100 cm, are the largest animals so far identified; the presence of these relatively large predators suggests the ecosystem was fully functional. Actinopterygii are represented by ten species in six orders: Palaeonisciformes, Ptycholepiformes, Acipenseriformes, Perleidiformes, Polzbergiiformes and Parasemionotiformes. Guanling biota). The presence of such a complete ecosystem implies that either components of all trophic levels managed to survive the Permian-Triassic extinction event, or they re-evolved very rapidly. ==See also==