Invertebrates

The difference between Permian and Triassic faunas is most noticeable among the marine invertebrates. At the Permian-Triassic boundary the number of families was reduced by half, with an estimated 85 to 95 percent of all species disappearing.

Ammonoids were common in the Permian but suffered drastic reduction at the end of that period. Only a few genera belonging to the prolecanitid group survived the crisis, but their descendants, the ceratitids, provided the rootstock for an explosive adaptive radiation in the Middle and Late Triassic. Ammonoid shells have a complex suture line where internal partitions join the outer shell wall. Ceratitids have varying external ornamentation, but all share the distinctive ceratitic internal suture line of rounded saddles and denticulate lobes, as shown by such Early Triassic genera as Otoceras and Ophiceras. The group first reached its acme and then declined dramatically in the Late Triassic. In the Carnian Stage (the first stage of the Late Triassic) there were more than 150 ceratitid genera; in the next stage, the Norian, there were fewer than 100, and finally in the Rhaetian Stage there were fewer than 10. In the Late Triassic evolved bizarre heteromorphs with loosely coiled body chambers, such as Choristoceras, or with helically coiled whorls, such as Cochloceras. These aberrant forms were short-lived, however. A small group of smooth-shelled forms with more complex suture lines, the phylloceratids, also arose in the Early Triassic. They are regarded as the earliest true ammonites and gave rise to all post-Triassic ammonites, even though Triassic ammonoids as a whole almost became extinct at the end of the period.

Other marine invertebrate fossils found in Triassic rocks, albeit much reduced in diversity compared with those of the Permian, include gastropods, bivalves, brachiopods, bryozoans, corals, foraminiferans, and echinoderms. These groups are either poorly represented or absent in Lower Triassic rocks but increase in importance later in the period. Most are bottom-dwellers (benthos), but the bivalve genera Claraia, Posidonia, Daonella, Halobia, and Monotis, often used as Triassic index fossils, were planktonic and may have achieved widespread distribution by being attached to floating seaweed. Colonial stony corals became important reef-builders in the Middle and Late Triassic. For example, the Rhaetian Dachstein reefs from Austria were colonized by a diverse fauna of colonial corals and calcareous sponges, with subsidiary calcareous algae, echinoids, foraminiferans, and other colonial invertebrates. Many successful Paleozoic articulate brachiopod superfamilies (those having valves characterized by teeth and sockets) became extinct at the end of the Permian, which left only the spiriferaceans, rhynchonellaceans, terebratulaceans, terebratellaceans, thecideaceans, and some other less important groups to continue into the Mesozoic. The brachiopods, however, never again achieved the dominance they held among the benthos of the Paleozoic, and they may have suffered competitively from the adaptive radiation of the bivalves in the Mesozoic.

Fossil echinoderms are represented in the Triassic by crinoid columnals and the echinoid Miocidaris, a holdover from the Permian. The crinoids had begun to decline long before the end of the Permian, by which time they were almost entirely decimated, with both the flexible and camerate varieties dying out. The inadunates survived the crisis; they did not become extinct until the end of the Triassic and gave rise to the articulates, which still exist today.

Vertebrates