This week we've got a few glimpses at the aftermath to the Great Dying. Frogs survived, as did conifers. This is all before the great rain, when the air was bad.
And it was hot. It got hotter in the "Late Smithian Thermal Maximum", lasting 700ky; this killed the tropical conifers.
Amphibians, it seems, can manage without air, if the water is decent; also, some bugs can burrow around in low-O2 conditions. Some land animals could sleep it off, seasonally. But the tropics don't really have hot/cold seasons. This equatorial band was the deadzone - except for amphibians.
Eventually the Triassic got the "Smithian-Spathian Event", cooling off the planet enough for seed-ferns (that staple of the Mesozoic, pre-deciduous era). Conifers clearly survived but, it appears, as marginally as today, up in high mountains and around the poles.
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