In the aftermath of Earth’s greatest biotic crisis 251.9 million years ago - the end-Permian mass extinction - a group of plants arose that would come to dominate the flora of the Southern Hemisphere. Recovery of the vegetation from the end-Permian crisis was slow; but steadily, one group of seed plants, typified by the leaf fossil Dicroidium, began to diversify and fill the dominant canopy-plant niches left vacant by the demise of the Permian glossopterid forests.