The Upper Triassic
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🌍 Dinosaurs, the majestic reptiles of the Mesozoic Era, continue to capture the imagination of scientists and prehistory enthusiasts around the world. The Triassic Era, when the first true dinosaurs appeared, is particularly fascinating. Dating back approximately 250–200 million years, the Triassic marks the beginning of an era in which the diversity of life on Earth expanded dramatically after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. This environmental cataclysm, one of the greatest mass extinctions in Earth's history, paved the way for the emergence of the dinosaurs, which would become the dominant creatures on our planet.
The Triassic is divided into three periods: the Early Triassic, the Middle Triassic, and the Late Triassic, each characterized by unique developments in both fauna and flora. It was during this period that the supercontinent Pangaea began to fracture, leading to significant climate changes that influenced the evolution of the first dinosaurs. Climates ranging from arid and dry to temperate and humid in different parts of the continent allowed for a wide variety of adaptations and evolution.
Fossils discovered during the Triassic give us a fascinating insight into these early dinosaurs. Genera like Herrerasaurus and Coelophysis show us agile bipedal creatures, contrasting with gigantic sauropodomorphs like Plateosaurus, whose size and build suggest a predominantly herbivorous diet. These discoveries are crucial to understanding how dinosaurs managed to become the dominant land animals during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, following the Triassic. Studying the Triassic is essential not only to understanding the origin and evolution of dinosaurs, but also to understanding the ecological and climatic dynamics that shaped life on Earth during this period.
🔥 As a reminder, videos are posted on Sundays at 9:00 PM.
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💥 The Triassic and the Dinosaurs:
We are 250 million years old. The Permian is closing its doors, while the Triassic is opening wide.
The extinction has left deep scars across the Earth's surface, not least in the vast ocean that covers most of the globe. Neither Pangaea nor Panthalassa were spared the multiple upheavals that marked the Late Permian.
Life seems to have stopped there.
After a few million years, however, vegetation cover helped animals repopulate the earth.
First, the few survivors of the Great Extinction were able to conquer larger territories on this vast land, which seemed virtually untouched by ecosystems. They settled into new ecological niches left vacant after the disappearance of previous living beings. This gave them the opportunity to diversify at will and rebuild the living world.
Rebuild, but also renew and diversify. In fact, the surviving species are far from the only ones populating the Earth. New species enrich the various ecosystems.
This phenomenon is known as radiation or speciation. Species will evolve to adapt to their new environment and occupy the spaces vacated by the chaos of the Permian.
But before we get to know these species, although I can imagine your curiosity and impatience, we need to know what we're getting into. Before discussing the characters in our Triassic comedy, we need to understand the context in which they evolved if we want to understand everything at stake.
What is the Earth like at this moment in our history? What is the climate like?