Barbaran-Joaquinian Extinction
381 million years hence
The domain of Pangaea Ultima could only last so long. As with every supercontinent in Earth's history, the continent would eventually rend itself apart as tectonic plates continued to move. This rifting was immediately preceded by mass volcanic upwelling, along the suture that the future continents Zephyr and Euroboreas would split from. Not only did a major rift in Pangaea Ultima form immediately beneath the Arctic ice cap, these eruptions would release massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, raising Earth's temperature and bringing the Neozoic Icehouse to an end.
This sudden climatic shift proves too much for the vast majority of neosaurs, many of which had become highly specialized animals. Birds suffered major losses, and the last mammals enter the Ultimozoic a dead clade walking. The marine realm has been hit much worse, though. Almost all lineages of fish and cephalopods were driven extinct by fluctuations in marine temperatures and oxygen levels.
Ultimately, the great survivors of the Barbaran-Joaquinian extinction would be arthropods. Almost no arthropod lineages went extinct, and they would diversify in the immediate aftermath. Plants that use C4 photosynthesis, as well as symbionts between true plants and terrestrial algae, would form the world's forests in the void left by C3 plants, which had been declining since the Francsican Floral Revolution. Fungi also made it through the extinction nearly unscathed, and will comprise a much greater portion of ecosystems in the Ultimozoic.
| ← North Africa, 350 myh | Euroboreas, 390 myh → |