Native Plant Society of New Mexico Native Plant Society of New Mexico

The late Paleozoic, Pennsylvanian, and Permian periods record a change from a glacial, cool Earth to an ice-free warm Earth about 300 million years ago. In the far western parts of the supercontinent of Pangea, New Mexico Pennsylvanian landscapes were less swampy, more seasonally dry, than those supporting the classic “Coal Age” floras of the Eastern US and Europe. They included a rich mixture of now-extinct plants typical of wet soils and others tolerant of drought. Moving into the Permian the global icehouse began to wane and a diverse array of new kinds of plants, largely drought-tolerant seed plants, began to appear. Many of these younger, Permian-age plants were ancestors to lineages still extant today, such a conifers, cycads, and possibly even flowering plants. Prior to the ice age we are presently in, this late Paleozoic time was the last major ice age in Earth history, and thus holds some lessons for today.

Dr. DiMichele is a research geologist and curator of paleobotany at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in the Department of Paleobiology.  He has done extensive work at the Kinney Brick Quarry near Albuquerque and at other sites in the southwest.