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Partial skeleton of Lystrosaurus from a P/T boundary near Bethulie, South Africa.
Lystrosaurus appears just before the P/T boundary and was perhaps the most abundant large vertebrate during the earliest portions of the Triassic.

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Plot of carbon isotopes in several phases across the P/T boundary at the Bethulie section.
There is a large excursion at or near the level at which Lystrosaurus appears and typical Permian taxa disappear. A similar carbon excursion is found in the marine realm worldwide demonstrating that biological changes among very different organisms living in very different habitats (mid to high latitude continental interiors versus tropical oceans) occurred at the same time (after MacLeod et al., 2000).

Click for larger graph in pdf.

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