Permian

Pangea: 300 million years; late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic era.

• reassembled the earlier continental units during the Carboniferous approximately 335 mya, and,
• began to break up about 200 mya, at the end of the Triassic / beginning of the Jurassic
• centered on the equator
• surrounded by the superocean Panthalassa and the Paleo-Tethys and subsequent Tethys oceans.

At 200 mya, early Mesozoic:

• from 60° north to 60°south:
• Texas to Florida, northernmost
• equator right through Brazil (about where it is today)
• southern line, north of lower third of South America
• in the big scheme of things, not too different than current Americas
• north-south looks very familiar; it's the west-east that has drifted apart

Euroamerica (Laurussia) from the north <----->Gondwana from the south

------->Pangea

Western edge of Pangea where Euroamerica / Gondwana meet: shallow basin -- the Permian Basin.

Climate of Pangea

• megamonsoon climate (alternating dry with huge rainstorms)
• except for a perpetual wet zone immediately around the central mountains

Pangea: lasted only 160 million years

• assembly: 335 mya (early carboniferous or late Proterozoic)
• breakup: 175 mya (middle Jurassic or middle Mesozoic)
• during this 160 million years, major evolutionary milestones
• early Carboniferous:
• seas: rugose corals; brachioopods, bryozoans, sharks, first bony fish
• land: lycopsid forests
• land life: insects, arthopods, and first tetrapods
• middle Jurassic:
• sea: swarmed with molluscs, particularly ammonites, ichthyosaurs, sharks, rays nad first ray-finned bony fishes
• land: dominated by forests of cycads and conifers; dinosaurs flourished; first mammals

The western drying Pangea: favored amniotes

Pangea climate favored mass extinctions:

• worst: Permian-Triassic
• also: Triassic-Jurassic

It looks like explanations for extinctions not well understood.

Permian Basin -- West Texas

Actually three seas within this basis, west to east:

• Marfan
• Delaware
• Midland

Delaware connected to the Marfan connected to the open ocean to the west via the Hovey Channel.

The three seas often cut off from each other and from the open ocean. 

When open to the ocean and all basins connected via the sea channel, proliferation of phyto- and zooplankton, sank to the bottom; organic ooze. When the sea levels dropped, channels dried up; lakes dried up leaving behind layers of impermeable salt and gypsum with trapped the layers of organic ooze. 

This occurred multiple times (at least eleven times) over fifty million years.

Think of a compost pile:

• too much organic material and too deep: too hot --> natural gas
• not deep enough / not enough material: kerogen but no oil

Oil window:

• 140° - 250°F
• 5,000 - 20,000 feet
• most areas of the world that have oil, one or two "formations" with oil:
• the Permian: eleven "formations" with oil