Get the latest tech news
Even the worst mass extinction had its oases
Plants thrived in present-day China throughout the End-Permian extinction.
Not only did these refugia give life a chance to survive the mass extinction event, which lasted 200,000 years, but they are now thought to have been crucial to rebuilding ecosystems in much less time than was previously assumed. “This environment might have served as a refugium for the iconic Mesozoic flora that emerged in the late Permian, potentially contributing to the stability of the food chain and attracting numerous terrestrial animals that survived,” the NIGPAS team said in a study recently published in Science Advances. From the herbivorous Lystrosaurus(not a dinosaur), which looked something like a walrus with legs and a shovel face, to the carnivorous chroniosuchians that resembled giant lizards and fed on insects and small amphibians, the refugium in what is now Xinjiang kept life going.
Or read this on Hacker News