Olenekian Stage

Recovery from Earth's greatest extinction event

The Olenekian (251–247 Ma) is the second age of the Early Triassic, occurring after the Induan, and before the Anisian (Middle Triassic)

Incredibly slow rate of recovery from Permian extinction until Olenekian.
In just half a million years, the process accelerated, and the world's living systems recovered something resembling their Late Permian vitality (Looy et al. 1999).
- In the Lopingian (Late Permian), Europe was covered in conifer forests.
- At the end-Permian, the conifers simply disappear.
For the Induan and most of the Olenekian, the region was covered by Pleuromeiales stands.
- During this period, soil formation was low; total biomass of these lycopsids was not particularly impressive, or the rate of erosion was unusually high.
- Few tree-sized species, and the soils would not have been strongly held.
- This may well have been a world-wide phenomenon, in view of the global absence of Early Triassic coal deposits.
Late in the Olenekian, the lycopsids were rapidly replaced by a transitional flora of low, shrub-like, and rather simple conifers.
Within half a million years, this was succeeded by open, Voltzia-dominated conifer forests, not so different from the original cover of the Lopingian.