Southern Hemisphere Perspectives on the End-Permian Life Crisis and the Triassic Recovery

displace the older polar faunas. The generic counts for west Texas, paleotropical in the Permian, indeed show that genera were much more numerous in paleotropics of the Permian than in the high latitude polar to subpolar and high temperate latitudes of Australia, and species also are far more numerous. But, for Australia, analysis of the geographic spread and origins of each genus from extensive data sets summarized in Waterhouse (2002b) certainly indicates that Phylum Brachiopoda, within Australia, owed little to evolution within the Permian or Carboniferous tropics. They actively immigrated from northern polar regions, from Patagonia and South Asia, and evolved locally. A meager few show tropical ties.