Following the worst mass extinction event on Earth, the land was not entirely barren of life. In the wake of this cataclysm, when forests mostly disappeared and many familiar plant species were lost, a unique group of plants emerged and proliferated across the planet. These plants were lycophytes. They were spore-producing plants. Recent findings indicate that they survived by utilizing a different approach to photosynthetic carbon assimilation. Specifically, this approach involved utilizing the cooler hours of the night for part of their carbon intake. This hypothesis regarding the effect of extensive volcanism in the Siberian Traps that contributed to the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction, approximately 252 million years ago, the event commonly referred to as The Great Dying, is particularly significant. It was not merely an environmental disaster. The Great Dying marked the extinction of 81% of all marine species and the extinction of nearly 89% of all tetrapod genera on the terrestrial surface. Consequently, this event was accompanied by intense volcanism, significant increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and extensive periods of persistently elevated global temperature. …