Carboniferous
The Carboniferous is a geologic period and system that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period 358.9 million years ago, to the beginning of the Permian Period, 298.9 Mya. The name Carboniferous means "coal-bearing" and derives from the Latin words carbō and ferō, was coined by geologists William Conybeare and William Phillips in 1822. Based on a study of the British rock succession, it was the first of the modern'system' names to be employed, reflects the fact that many coal beds were formed globally during that time; the Carboniferous is treated in North America as two geological periods, the earlier Mississippian and the Pennsylvanian. Terrestrial animal life was well established by the Carboniferous period. Amphibians were the dominant land vertebrates, of which one branch would evolve into amniotes, the first terrestrial vertebrates. Arthropods were very common, many were much larger than those of today. Vast swaths of forest covered the land, which would be laid down and become the coal beds characteristic of the Carboniferous stratigraphy evident today.
The atmospheric content of oxygen reached its highest levels in geological history during the period, 35% compared with 21% today, allowing terrestrial invertebrates to evolve to great size. The half of the period experienced glaciations, low sea level, mountain building as the continents collided to form Pangaea. A minor marine and terrestrial extinction event, the Carboniferous rainforest collapse, occurred at the end of the period, caused by climate change. In the United States the Carboniferous is broken into Mississippian and Pennsylvanian subperiods; the Mississippian is about twice as long as the Pennsylvanian, but due to the large thickness of coal-bearing deposits with Pennsylvanian ages in Europe and North America, the two subperiods were long thought to have been more or less equal in duration. In Europe the Lower Carboniferous sub-system is known as the Dinantian, comprising the Tournaisian and Visean Series, dated at 362.5-332.9 Ma, the Upper Carboniferous sub-system is known as the Silesian, comprising the Namurian and Stephanian Series, dated at 332.9-298.9 Ma.
The Silesian is contemporaneous with the late Mississippian Serpukhovian plus the Pennsylvanian. In Britain the Dinantian is traditionally known as the Carboniferous Limestone, the Namurian as the Millstone Grit, the Westphalian as the Coal Measures and Pennant Sandstone; the International Commission on Stratigraphy faunal stages from youngest to oldest, together with some of their regional subdivisions, are: A global drop in sea level at the end of the Devonian reversed early in the Carboniferous. There was a drop in south polar temperatures; these conditions had little effect in the deep tropics, where lush swamps to become coal, flourished to within 30 degrees of the northernmost glaciers. Mid-Carboniferous, a drop in sea level precipitated a major marine extinction, one that hit crinoids and ammonites hard; this sea level drop and the associated unconformity in North America separate the Mississippian subperiod from the Pennsylvanian subperiod. This happened about 323 million years ago, at the onset of the Permo-Carboniferous Glaciation.
The Carboniferous was a time of active mountain-building as the supercontinent Pangaea came together. The southern continents remained tied together in the supercontinent Gondwana, which collided with North America–Europe along the present line of eastern North America; this continental collision resulted in the Hercynian orogeny in Europe, the Alleghenian orogeny in North America. In the same time frame, much of present eastern Eurasian plate welded itself to Europe along the line of the Ural Mountains. Most of the Mesozoic supercontinent of Pangea was now assembled, although North China, South China continents were still separated from Laurasia; the Late Carboniferous Pangaea was shaped like an "O." There were two major oceans in the Carboniferous—Panthalassa and Paleo-Tethys, inside the "O" in the Carboniferous Pangaea. Other minor oceans were shrinking and closed - Rheic Ocean, the small, shallow Ural Ocean and Proto-Tethys Ocean. Average global temperatures in the Early Carboniferous Period were high: 20 °C.
However, cooling during the Middle Carboniferous reduced average global temperatures to about 12 °C. Lack of growth rings of fossilized trees suggest a lack of seasons of a tropical climate. Glaciations in Gondwana, triggered by Gondwana's southward movement, continued into the Permian and because of the lack of clear markers and breaks, the deposits of this glacial period are referred to as Permo-Carboniferous in age; the cooling and drying of the climate led to the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse during the late Carboniferous. Tropical rainforests fragmented and were devastated by climate change. Carboniferous rocks in Europe and eastern North America consist of a repeated sequence of limestone, sandstone and coal beds. In North America, the early Carboniferous is marine
Apache
The Apache are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Lipan, Salinero and Western Apache. Distant cousins of the Apache are the Navajo, with which they share the Southern Athabaskan languages. There are Apache communities in Oklahoma and reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. Apache people have moved throughout the United States and elsewhere, including urban centers; the Apache Nations are politically autonomous, speak several different languages and have distinct cultures. The Apache homelands have consisted of high mountains and watered valleys, deep canyons and the southern Great Plains, including areas in what is now Eastern Arizona, Northern Mexico (Sonora and New Mexico, West Texas, Southern Colorado; these areas are collectively known as Apacheria. The Apache tribes fought the invading Mexican peoples for centuries; the first Apache raids on Sonora appear to have taken place during the late 17th century. In 19th-century confrontations during the American-Indian wars, the U.
S. Army found the Apache to be skillful strategists; the following Apache tribes are federally recognized: Apache Tribe of Oklahoma Fort Sill Apache Tribe of Oklahoma Jicarilla Apache Nation, New Mexico Mescalero Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Reservation, New Mexico San Carlos Apache Tribe of the San Carlos Reservation, Arizona Tonto Apache Tribe of Arizona White Mountain Apache Tribe of the Fort Apache Reservation, Arizona Yavapai-Apache Nation of the Camp Verde Indian Reservation, ArizonaThe Jicarilla are headquartered in Dulce, New Mexico, while the Mescalero are headquartered in Mescalero, New Mexico. The Western Apache, located in Arizona, is divided into several reservations, which crosscut cultural divisions; the Western Apache reservations include the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, Yavapai-Apache Nation and Tonto-Apache Reservation. The Chiricahua were divided into two groups; the majority moved to the Mescalero Reservation and form, with the larger Mescalero political group, the Mescalero Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Apache Reservation, along with the Lipan Apache.
The other Chiricahua are enrolled in the Fort Sill Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, headquartered in Apache, Oklahoma. The Plains Apache are located in Oklahoma, headquartered around Anadarko, are federally recognized as the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma; the people who are known today as Apache were first encountered by the Conquistadors of the Spanish Crown, thus the term Apache has its roots in the Spanish language. The Spanish first used the term "Apachu de Nabajo" in the 1620s, referring to people in the Chama region east of the San Juan River. By the 1640s, they applied the term to southern Athabaskan peoples from the Chama on the east to the San Juan on the west; the ultimate origin is uncertain and lost to Spanish history. Modern Apache people today, the US government, maintain use of the Spanish term to describe themselves and tribal functions. Indigenous lineages who speak the language, handed down to them would refer to themselves and their people in that language's term Inde meaning "person" and/or "People".
Distant cousins and a subgroup of the Apache are the Navajo Peoples who in their own language refer to themselves as the Diné. The first known written record in Spanish is by Juan de Oñate in 1598; the most accepted origin theory suggests Apache was borrowed and transliterated from the Zuni word ʔa·paču meaning "Navajos". Another theory suggests the term comes from Yavapai ʔpačə meaning "enemy"; the Zuni and Yavapai sources are less certain because Oñate used the term before he had encountered any Zuni or Yavapai. A less origin may be from Spanish mapache, meaning "raccoon"; the fame of the tribes' tenacity and fighting skills bolstered by dime novels, was known among Europeans. In early 20th century Parisian society, the word Apache was adopted into French meaning an outlaw; the term Apachean includes the related Navajo people. Many of the historical names of Apache groups that were recorded by non-Apache are difficult to match to modern-day tribes or their subgroups. Over the centuries, many Spanish and English-speaking authors did not differentiate between Apache and other semi-nomadic non-Apache peoples who might pass through the same area.
Most Europeans learned to identify the tribes by translating their exonym, what another group whom the Europeans encountered first called the Apache peoples. Europeans did not learn what the peoples called themselves, their autonyms. While anthropologists agree on some traditional major subgrouping of Apaches, they have used different criteria to name finer divisions, these do not always match modern Apache groupings; some scholars do not consider groups residing in. In addition, an Apache individual has different ways of identification with a group, such as a band or clan, as well as the larger tribe or language grouping, which can add to the difficulties in an outsider comprehending the distinctions. In 1900, the U. S. government classified the members of the Apache tribe in the United States as Pinal Coyotero, Mescalero, San Carlos and White Mountain Apache. The different groups were located in Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma. In the 1930s, the anthropologist Grenville Goodwin classified the Western Apache into five groups: White Mountain, San Carlos, North Tonto, South Tonto.
Since other anthropologists (e.g. Albert Sc
The Albuquerque Tribune
The Albuquerque Tribune was an afternoon newspaper in Albuquerque, New Mexico, founded in 1922 by Carlton Cole Magee as Magee's Independent. It was published in the evening Monday through Saturday. On February 20, 2008, E. W. Scripps Company announced that the Tribune would close, effective February 23, 2008; the closure followed a seven-month effort by the company to sell the paper, which had declined in circulation from 42,000 in 1988 to about 10,000 in 2008. Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico declared the paper's last day "Albuquerque Tribune Day" in his state, to "celebrate the Tribune's long and proud history and its honorable service to the state."Eileen Welsome of The Albuquerque Tribune won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1994 for her series entitled "The Plutonium Experiment", a series about human radiation experiments that took place at the Walter E. Fernald State School of Massachusetts, among other locations; the paper's logo and the logo of the entire Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, depicting a lighthouse, was inspired by founder Magee's original slogan: "Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way".
On February 20, 1933, The Albuquerque Tribune formed the nation's first joint operating agreement, entitled the "Albuquerque Plan," with the Albuquerque Journal in response to the Great Depression of 1929. The JOA established the Albuquerque Publishing Company and merged the Albuquerque Evening Journal with the Tribune The Albuquerque Tribune and Albuquerque Journal merged presses and circulation while remaining as separate editorial entities; as part of the joint operating agreement, the Tribune was to be a local newspaper only, focusing on issues in the Albuquerque metropolitan area. Although the JOA ended when Scripps shut down the newspaper, Scripps retained its stake in Albuquerque Publishing Company, giving Scripps a corresponding share in any future Albuquerque Journal profits. Scripps had not offered to sell its share in the JOA when it attempted to sell the paper, something that Editor & Publisher noted was another factor in Scripps' inability to find a buyer for the Tribune. Scripps subsidiary profile of The Albuquerque Tribune
Mountain range
A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills ranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form and alignment that have arisen from the same cause an orogeny. Mountain ranges are formed by a variety of geological processes, but most of the significant ones on Earth are the result of plate tectonics. Mountain ranges are found on many planetary mass objects in the Solar System and are a feature of most terrestrial planets. Mountain ranges are segmented by highlands or mountain passes and valleys. Individual mountains within the same mountain range do not have the same geologic structure or petrology, they may be a mix of different orogenic expressions and terranes, for example thrust sheets, uplifted blocks, fold mountains, volcanic landforms resulting in a variety of rock types. Most geologically young mountain ranges on the Earth's land surface are associated with either the Pacific Ring of Fire or the Alpide Belt.
The Pacific Ring of Fire includes the Andes of South America, extends through the North American Cordillera along the Pacific Coast, the Aleutian Range, on through Kamchatka, Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, to New Zealand. The Andes is 7,000 kilometres long and is considered the world's longest mountain system; the Alpide belt includes Indonesia and Southeast Asia, through the Himalaya, Caucasus Mountains, Balkan Mountains fold mountain range, the Alps, ends in the Spanish mountains and the Atlas Mountains. The belt includes other European and Asian mountain ranges; the Himalayas contain the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, 8,848 metres high and traverses the border between China and Nepal. Mountain ranges outside these two systems include the Arctic Cordillera, the Urals, the Appalachians, the Scandinavian Mountains, the Great Dividing Range, the Altai Mountains and the Hijaz Mountains. If the definition of a mountain range is stretched to include underwater mountains the Ocean Ridges form the longest continuous mountain system on Earth, with a length of 65,000 kilometres.
The mountain systems of the earth are characterized by a tree structure, where mountain ranges can contain sub-ranges. The sub-range relationship is expressed as a parent-child relationship. For example, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Blue Ridge Mountains are sub-ranges of the Appalachian Mountains. Equivalently, the Appalachians are the parent of the White Mountains and Blue Ridge Mountains, the White Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains are children of the Appalachians; the parent-child expression extends to the sub-ranges themselves: the Sandwich Range and the Presidential Range are children of the White Mountains, while the Presidential Range is parent to the Northern Presidential Range and Southern Presidential Range. The position of mountains influences climate, such as snow; when air masses move up and over mountains, the air cools producing orographic precipitation. As the air descends on the leeward side, it warms again and is drier, having been stripped of much of its moisture.
A rain shadow will affect the leeward side of a range. Mountain ranges are subjected to erosional forces which work to tear them down; the basins adjacent to an eroding mountain range are filled with sediments which are buried and turned into sedimentary rock. Erosion is at work while the mountains are being uplifted until the mountains are reduced to low hills and plains; the early Cenozoic uplift of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado provides an example. As the uplift was occurring some 10,000 feet of Mesozoic sedimentary strata were removed by erosion over the core of the mountain range and spread as sand and clays across the Great Plains to the east; this mass of rock was removed as the range was undergoing uplift. The removal of such a mass from the core of the range most caused further uplift as the region adjusted isostatically in response to the removed weight. Rivers are traditionally believed to be the principal cause of mountain range erosion, by cutting into bedrock and transporting sediment.
Computer simulation has shown that as mountain belts change from tectonically active to inactive, the rate of erosion drops because there are fewer abrasive particles in the water and fewer landslides. Mountains on other planets and natural satellites of the Solar System are isolated and formed by processes such as impacts, though there are examples of mountain ranges somewhat similar to those on Earth. Saturn's moon Titan and Pluto, in particular exhibit large mountain ranges in chains composed of ices rather than rock. Examples include the Mithrim Montes and Doom Mons on Titan, Tenzing Montes and Hillary Montes on Pluto; some terrestrial planets other than Earth exhibit rocky mountain ranges, such as Maxwell Montes on Venus taller than any on Earth and Tartarus Montes on Mars, Jupiter's moon Io has mountain ranges formed from tectonic processes including Boösaule Montes, Dorian Montes, Hi'iaka Montes and Euboea Montes. Peakbagger Ranges Home Page Bivouac.com
San Andres Mountains
The San Andres Mountains are a mountain range in the southwestern U. S. state of New Mexico, in the counties of Socorro, Doña Ana. The range are only about 12 miles wide at their widest; the highest peak in the San Andres Mountains is Salinas Peak, at 8,965 feet. Though nearly contiguous with the Organ Mountains to the south, the two are distinct geologically and botanically; the Oscura Mountains to the north are separated from the San Andres Mountains by Mockingbird Gap and the much lower Little Burro Mountains. The San Andres Mountains do not support any extensive woodlands, they are closed to the public, lying entirely within the restricted White Sands Missile Range. The San Andres Mountains form part of the eastern edge of the rift valley of the Rio Grande, are made up of west-dipping fault blocks made of San Andres Formation limestone, but with extensive exposures of reddish Abo Formation sandstone on the western side, quartz monzonite on the eastern side. Gypsum deposits washed from these mountains are the main source of the dunes in White Sands National Monument.
Significant summits include: The biggest and best desert bighorn sheep habitat in New Mexico is in the San Andres Mountains, which can host up to 400 bighorn. An area of 57,215 acres in the southern portion of the San Andres Mountain range was set aside in 1941 as the San Andres National Wildlife Refuge to help preserve the desert bighorn sheep, which at the time numbered 33. In the mid 1970s there were around 200 sheep in the refuge. Subsequent years brought further declines from scabies and other causes until the population consisted of one ewe in 1997. Reintroduction of desert bighorn sheep occurred in 2002 and the herd has now about 80 members. "San Andres Mountains". Peakbagger.com. Retrieved June 3, 2005. "San Andres Mountains" New Mexico Tourism Department, as of December 9, 2006, via Internet Archive "San Andres Mountains". Encyclopædia Britannica, online edition. Retrieved June 3, 2005
F. Lee Bailey
Francis Lee Bailey Jr. is an American former criminal defense attorney. For most of his career he was licensed in Florida and in Massachusetts, where he was disbarred in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Among other high-profile trials, he served as the lawyer in the re-trial of osteopathic physician Sam Sheppard, was the supervisory attorney over attorney Mark J. Kadish in the court martial of Captain Ernest Medina for the My Lai Massacre, was one of the lawyers for the defense in the O. J. Simpson murder case, he has had a number of visible defeats, legal controversies, personal troubles with the law, was disbarred in Massachusetts and Florida for misconduct while defending his client Claude DuBoc. In 2014, he was denied a law license by the Maine Board of Bar Examiners and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Bailey was born in Massachusetts, his mother was a teacher and nursery school director, his father an advertising salesman. His parents divorced. Bailey attended Cardigan Mountain School and Kimball Union Academy, where he graduated in 1950.
He dropped out in 1952 to join the United States Marine Corps. Bailey was commissioned as an officer and, following flight training, received his Naval Aviator wings in 1954, he served as a jet fighter pilot, began to serve as a squadron legal officer. He returned to Harvard before being admitted to Boston University School of Law in 1957, which accepted his military experience in lieu of the requirement for students to have completed at least three years of undergraduate college courses. While attending Boston University he achieved the highest grade point average in the school's history, he graduated with an LL. B. in 1960 and was ranked first in his class. In 1954, Sam Sheppard was found guilty in the murder of his wife Marilyn; the case is regarded as one of the inspirations for the television series The Fugitive. In the 1960s Bailey, at the time a resident of Rocky River, was hired by Sheppard's brother Stephen to help in Sheppard's appeal. In 1966, Bailey argued before the U. S. Supreme Court that Sheppard had been denied due process.
A not guilty verdict followed. This case established Bailey's reputation as a skilled defense attorney and was the first of many high-profile cases. While defendant Albert DeSalvo was in jail for a series of sexual assaults known as the "Green Man" incidents, he confessed his guilt in the "Boston Strangler" murders to Bailey. DeSalvo was never tried for the stranglings. Carl A. Coppolino was accused of the July 30, 1963, murder of retired Army Col. William Farber, his neighbor and the husband of Marjorie Farber, with whom Coppolino was having an affair, he was accused of the August 28, 1965, murder of his wife, Carmela Coppolino. The prosecution claimed that Coppolino injected his victims with a paralyzing drug called succinylcholine chloride, which at the time was undetectable due to limited forensic technology. Bailey defended Coppolino in the New Jersey case over the death of Farber in December 1966. However, Coppolino was convicted of murdering his wife in Florida, he was paroled after serving 12 years of his sentence.
Bailey attended Keeler Polygraph Institute in Chicago, where he became an expert in lie detector tests. It was in this capacity that he was enlisted by the defense in the case of George Edgerly, a mechanic charged with murdering his wife; when Edgerly's attorney was incapacitated by a heart attack, Bailey took over the defense. Edgerly—whose story was one of several that served as the basis for the television series and film The Fugitive—was acquitted. Bailey defended U. S. Army Captain Ernest Medina in his 1971 court-martial for responsibility in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. Medina was court-martialed for allowing the men in the company he commanded to murder My Lai non-combatants. Medina claimed that he never gave orders to kill non-combatants, that his men killed non-combatants of their own volition. Medina testified that he was unable to stop the massacre because he did not become aware of it until it was too late. Medina additionally denied killing any Vietnamese non-combatants at My Lai, with the exception of a young woman whom two soldiers testified that they had found hiding in a ditch.
When she emerged with her hands held up, Medina shot her because, as he claimed at his court-martial, he thought she had a grenade. Medina was acquitted, subsequently left the Army, he worked at an Enstrom Helicopter Corporation plant in which Bailey had an ownership stake. The prosecution of Patty Hearst, a newspaper heiress who had committed armed bank robberies after being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, was one of Bailey's defeats. In her autobiography Hearst described his closing argument as "disjointed" and said that she suspected he had been drinking. During his closing argument, Bailey spilled a glass of water on his pants. Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison, she served 22 months before her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. She was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001. While Hearst was convicted at trial, Bailey did protect her from a further death-penalty prosecution. On April 28, 1975, members of the SLA had robbed a Crocker Bank branch in California.
Hearst drove one of the getaway cars. A customer was killed; the Symbionese Liberation Army members participating in the robbery were therefore subject to the death penalty under the felony murder rule. Bailey negotiated with prosecutors for Hearst to receive immunity in exchange for her testimony about the Carmichael robbery, thus protect
Permian
The Permian is a geologic period and system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous Period 298.9 million years ago, to the beginning of the Triassic period 251.902 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleozoic era; the concept of the Permian was introduced in 1841 by geologist Sir Roderick Murchison, who named it after the city of Perm. The Permian witnessed the diversification of the early amniotes into the ancestral groups of the mammals, turtles and archosaurs; the world at the time was dominated by two continents known as Pangaea and Siberia, surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa. The Carboniferous rainforest collapse left behind vast regions of desert within the continental interior. Amniotes, who could better cope with these drier conditions, rose to dominance in place of their amphibian ancestors; the Permian ended with the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the largest mass extinction in Earth's history, in which nearly 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial species died out.
It would take well into the Triassic for life to recover from this catastrophe. Recovery from the Permian–Triassic extinction event was protracted; the term "Permian" was introduced into geology in 1841 by Sir R. I. Murchison, president of the Geological Society of London, who identified typical strata in extensive Russian explorations undertaken with Édouard de Verneuil; the region now lies in the Perm Krai of Russia. Official ICS 2017 subdivisions of the Permian System from most recent to most ancient rock layers are: Lopingian epoch Changhsingian Wuchiapingian Others: Waiitian Makabewan Ochoan Guadalupian epoch Capitanian stage Wordian stage Roadian stage Others: Kazanian or Maokovian Braxtonian stage Cisuralian epoch Kungurian stage Artinskian stage Sakmarian stage Asselian stage Others: Telfordian Mangapirian Sea levels in the Permian remained low, near-shore environments were reduced as all major landmasses collected into a single continent—Pangaea; this could have in part caused the widespread extinctions of marine species at the end of the period by reducing shallow coastal areas preferred by many marine organisms.
During the Permian, all the Earth's major landmasses were collected into a single supercontinent known as Pangaea. Pangaea straddled the equator and extended toward the poles, with a corresponding effect on ocean currents in the single great ocean, the Paleo-Tethys Ocean, a large ocean that existed between Asia and Gondwana; the Cimmeria continent rifted away from Gondwana and drifted north to Laurasia, causing the Paleo-Tethys Ocean to shrink. A new ocean was growing on its southern end, the Tethys Ocean, an ocean that would dominate much of the Mesozoic era. Large continental landmass interiors experience climates with extreme variations of heat and cold and monsoon conditions with seasonal rainfall patterns. Deserts seem to have been widespread on Pangaea; such dry conditions favored gymnosperms, plants with seeds enclosed in a protective cover, over plants such as ferns that disperse spores in a wetter environment. The first modern trees appeared in the Permian. Three general areas are noted for their extensive Permian deposits—the Ural Mountains and the southwest of North America, including the Texas red beds.
The Permian Basin in the U. S. states of Texas and New Mexico is so named because it has one of the thickest deposits of Permian rocks in the world. The climate in the Permian was quite varied. At the start of the Permian, the Earth was still in an ice age. Glaciers receded around the mid-Permian period as the climate warmed, drying the continent's interiors. In the late Permian period, the drying continued although the temperature cycled between warm and cool cycles. Permian marine deposits are rich in fossil mollusks and brachiopods. Fossilized shells of two kinds of invertebrates are used to identify Permian strata and correlate them between sites: fusulinids, a kind of shelled amoeba-like protist, one of the foraminiferans, ammonoids, shelled cephalopods that are distant relatives of the modern nautilus. By the close of the Permian, trilobites and a host of other marine groups became extinct. Terrestrial life in the Permian included diverse plants, fungi and various types of tetrapods; the period saw a massive desert covering the interior of Pangaea.
The warm zone spread in the northern hemisphere. The rocks formed at that time were stained red by iron oxides, the result of intense heating by the sun of a surface devoid of vegetation cover. A number of older types of plants and animals became marginal elements; the Permian began with the Carboniferous flora still flourishing. About the middle of the Permian a major transition in vegetation began; the swamp-loving
