How is the Permian period different from Quaternary period?

Answer 1

The Permian period lasted from 299 million until 252 million years ago while the Quaternary is the current period, which started 2.59 million years ago.

Conditions through the Quaternary period were fairly similar to what they are now with two notable differences regarding recent developments. The Quaternary was dominated by a series of colder periods where glaciers covered much of North America interspersed with warmer interglacial periods. We are currently in an interglacial phase. In the past few thousand years a number of large mammals characteristic of the Quaternary, including mammoths, the woolly rhinoceros, and saber-toothed cats, have gone extinct. Second, large portions of Earth are now dominated by human civilization, which has developed in the past 10,000 years.

By contrast, the Permian was a very different time. All of the continents were combined into a supercontinent called Pangaea. The center of the continent held a high, extensive mountain range. The early Permian was in an ice age state similar to the glacial periods of the Quaternary, but the climate warmed gradually, turning most of Pangaea into a vast desert. There were no birds, mammals, or flowering plants. Many of the animals we are familiar with had not evolved yet. The dominant vertebrates on land were a group of reptile-like animals called synapsids. The few of these that survived into the next period, the Triassic, would become the ancestors of mammals. A group of reptiles called archosaurs emerged in the late Permian and would later give rise to dinosaurs. The end of the Permian was marked by the worst mass extinction event in Earth's history in which 90% of life on Earth died out. The aftermath in the Triassic period would give rise to dinosaurs and mammals.