Abstract
The closure of the Palaeozoic witnessed the greatest biotic crisis in earth history. Surprisingly little is known about the effects and timing of the terrestrial counterpart of the well-described End-Permian mass extinction from known marine successions worldwide. In the present study, reliable paleomagnetic results were obtained from a PT boundary section in the terrestrial Karoo Basin of South Africa. Permo-Triassic aged mudstones from a locality in the Eastern Cape Province yielded two magnetic chrons, reverse followed by normal (with the boundary possibly close to the reversal). This extends to results from a previous study: thereby jointly identifying a R/N/R polarity pattern for this boundary interval. The PTB interval is constrained below the red mudstones of the Beaufort Group at the present locality and within reverse-magnetised green mudstone, implying a diachronic relation between the marine and terrestrial End-Permian mass extinction events.
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