Behind the dinosaurs was a case with skulls of Permian synapsids. They don't get many visitors. Lystrosaurus, the synapsid that inherited the barren world of the Triassic, stared out empty-eyed.

The Permian period immediately predated the dinosaurs. Ronchi said he was also “surprised by the abundance and preservation” of the fossils when he first saw the images. “It is the first ...

One member of this group was a large, sail-backed animal called dimetrodon, which looks like it could be a dinosaur but isn’t. Then 252 million years ago came the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

The creatures, found near Kotlas, lived in the Permian period (the last period of the Paleozoic Era) - that is more than 200 million years ago. Much earlier than the time of dinosaurs.

This also marked the first time the earliest dinosaurs appeared. The Permian period’s mass extinction had wiped out the mammals that could have been competitors for these reptiles on land and in ...