Textbooks in Question: Did the Oceans Recover in Just 3 Million Years After the "Worst Mass Extinction in Earth's History"?

"After the mass extinction, the marine ecosystem slowly recovered"—this "textbook story" has been strongly challenged from the Arctic. Fossils discovered and analyzed in the Svalbard archipelago of Norway (the largest island, Spitsbergen) suggest that the sea regained its complexity at a much faster pace than imagined, right after one of the worst mass extinctions in Earth's history (the end-Permian mass extinction, known as the "Great Dying").ScienceDaily

From a "sea where over 90% disappeared," in just 3 million years?

The end-Permian mass extinction (about 252 million years ago) was an unprecedented crisis where over 90% of marine life is said to have vanished. Causes discussed include intense warming due to a rapid increase in greenhouse gases, ocean deoxygenation, acidification, and massive volcanic activity.ScienceDaily

The question is, "How quickly did the sea recover afterward?" The long-dominant view was that reconstructing the food web required a "gradual recovery" over millions of years, with marine vertebrates (tetrapods like amphibians and reptiles moving into the sea) also progressing slowly.ScienceDaily

However, the fossil layers (bone beds) in Spitsbergen, Arctic, presented an image where a complex food web with predators at the top was already established "as early as about 3 million years" after the extinction.ScienceDaily

The stage of discovery: "Seafloor remaining on the Arctic mountainside"

The discovery site is Spitsbergen Island, located in the current Arctic Circle. According to the Natural History Museum (NHM) in the UK, a fossil-rich layer from about 249 million years ago (early Middle Triassic) is exposed on the slopes of Mount Marmier. Mud that was once the seafloor turned into rock and was uplifted by tectonic movements, appearing as a "mountainside fossil layer."Natural History Museum

The research team collected over 30,000 items from this layer, including teeth, bones, scales, and even "coprolites" (fossilized feces).ScienceDaily

According to ScienceDaily, the discovery itself was made in 2015, and it took about ten years for excavation, sorting, identification, and analysis.ScienceDaily(The NHM explains it as a 2014 discovery, suggesting it was found "between 2014 and 2015, followed by long-term analysis.")Natural History Museum)

The collection wasn't just about perseverance. The ScienceDaily article states that a 1㎡ grid was laid out, systematically digging a total of 36㎡ and recovering over 800kg of samples. Because these are "dense snapshots" emerging from the same layer, rather than scattered fossils, they can reconstruct the ecosystem of the time in three dimensions.ScienceDaily

Not just "tetrapods that had just ventured into the sea"

What makes this bone bed interesting is the "variation" of the unearthed organisms. According to EurekAlert (AAAS summary), it includes apex predator-level ichthyosaurs and smaller ichthyosaur relatives, crustacean-crushing lineages, semi-aquatic archosauromorphs (distant relatives of crocodiles), early amphibians (temnospondyls) that could withstand salinity changes, and various fish and sharks distributed across multiple trophic levels.EurekAlert!

ScienceDaily also suggests that from types targeting squid-like prey under 1m to giant apex predators over 5m were indicated in the same location.ScienceDaily

Instead of "a sparse sea right after extinction, where organisms gradually returned," a "predator-prey relationship was established at a fairly early stage"—this gap is the core of this news.

Was "slow recovery" really universal?

What's important here is that the research does not claim that "the entire Earth's oceans recovered simultaneously." According to NHM's explanation, recovery after extinction varied by location, suggesting that the Svalbard area might have been a "region that recovered quickly."Natural History Museum

Thus, the discovery should be taken not as a complete denial of the general notion that "recovery is slow," but rather as strong evidence, through fossil density and stratigraphic constraints (relatively narrow time span of strata), that "at least in some marine areas, a diverse and complex ecosystem could have been established faster than expected."EurekAlert!

Furthermore, the AAAS summary touches on the possibility that some lineages of marine tetrapods were already diversifying and adapting to the sea "before" the extinction, not just "immediately after."EurekAlert!

If this is supported, it would mean that "the evolutionary flow towards the new frontier of the sea was already running amidst the turmoil of environmental upheaval," rather than "the end of the mass extinction allowed room to venture into the sea." The "starting point" of evolutionary history shifts.

How does this connect to today's Earth (cautiously)

Stories of such "rapid recovery" tend to be linked to modern climate change. However, the early Triassic seas and modern oceans differ in geography, biota, and chemical environment. Simple analogies are dangerous.

Nevertheless, there are suggestions.

• Recovery is not uniform: There may be areas functioning as "refugia," where the restart of biodiversity occurs quickly.Natural History Museum

• Reconstruction of food webs is not "linear": Complexity, including predators, can establish surprisingly quickly, not just in the order of increasing species numbers.ScienceDaily

The important thing is not to use this as material for optimism, thinking "nature will recover, so it's okay," but to read it as material for considering "what are the conditions for recovery" and "where will be the starting point for recovery."

Reactions on SNS/Internet (as far as confirmed)

This study is said to be published in the journal Science, and is spreading mainly through "link sharing" in expert and science enthusiast communities.ScienceDaily

• Bluesky: A post under the name of Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., known as a paleontologist, shares a link to the Science paper page (DOI: 10.1126/science.adx7390) on November 13, 2025. It's more of a "let's read first" sharing reaction than a short review.Bluesky Social

• News sharing/community sites: In the Russian-speaking "Голос Науки" news list, this ScienceDaily article was posted on December 30, 2025, with reaction indicators like "38 0" displayed on the site. There is a lead to the comment section, but at least on the list display, it appears as "comment 0."Golos Nauki

• Reddit (auto-repost sub): A related article from Times of India is posted as an AutoNewspaper post (a type where science news is mechanically posted). It's more like a "headline aggregation" than a discussion thread.Reddit

Overall, within the range that can be confirmed at this point, it seems more like "quietly circulating paper and news links on expert-oriented timelines" rather than "a surprising reaction causing a big uproar."