Eras

Permian

PUR-mee-un

Citation Formats

General Reference

Earth and Environment Atlas. "Permian." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://earth.interactiveatlas.org/eras/permian.

APA Style

Earth and Environment Atlas. (n.d.). Permian. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://earth.interactiveatlas.org/eras/permian

BibTeX

@misc{earthandenvironmentatlas-permian,
  author = {Earth and Environment Atlas},
  title = {Permian},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://earth.interactiveatlas.org/eras/permian},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The Permian is the sixth and last period of the Paleozoic Era, spanning about 298.9 to 251.902 million years ago; the following Triassic belongs to the Mesozoic. It ended with the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the most severe mass extinction recorded in the fossil record, associated with the eruption of the Siberian Traps.

Facts

Rank

Period 1

Start (Million Years Ago)

298.9 1

Standard boundary age from the ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart; not independently re-dated by this atlas.

End (Million Years Ago)

251.902 1

Standard boundary age from the ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart; not independently re-dated by this atlas.

Key Event

The Permian-Triassic extinction event closed the period: nearly 81 percent of marine species and 70 percent of terrestrial species died out, associated with the eruption of the Siberian Traps, and land ecosystems took some 30 million years to recover. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections