The Triassic Period: The History and Legacy of the Geologic

Era that Witnessed the Rise of Dinosaurs

By Charles River Editors

 
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 Introduction

A picture of sandstone dating back to the Triassic

Scientists have long attempted to understand Earth’s past, and in service
to that effort, they have divided the world’s history into eons, eras, periods,
epochs and ages. For example, the current eon is called the Phanerozoic,
which means “visible life.” This is the eon in which multi-cellular life has
evolved and thrived. Before this, life was microscopic (single cell).
The Phanerozoic eon is divided into 3 eras - Paleozoic (“old life”),
Mesozoic (“middle life”) and Cenozoic (“new life”). From there, the
Mesozoic era is divided into 3 periods - Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous.
Before the Triassic, primitive life had built up in the oceans and seas, and
some lifeforms finally had crawled onto land during the Paleozoic era. With
that, life had become well established, but then came the Permian-Triassic
mass extinction, the worst extinction event in the history of the planet. At
the end of the Triassic, another extinction event cleared the way for
dinosaurs to become the dominant set of species in the Jurassic.
Though the Triassic does not have as interesting a list of creatures as
those in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, such as Tyrannosaurus rex,
Stegosaurus, Pterodactyls, Brontosaurus, and the like, the life which
reclaimed the Earth and then thrived during this period was no less
important. Life during the Triassic spent nearly 60% of its time recovering
from the Permian-Triassic extinction event, roughly 30 million years. What
had been built up was then slammed by nature, effectively clearing the
board once more for new species to take over.
Throughout northwest Europe and especially Germany, three layers
dominate the geographical landscape:
• Black shales
• White limestones
• Red sandstones.
These were called the “Trias,” or “triad.” Realizing that these three layers
were a meaningful unit, German geologist Friedrich von Alberti named
them the “Triassic” in 1834. Not far away, in the Jura Mountains of western
Switzerland and eastern France, evidence there ended up providing the
name for the Jurassic period.
The Triassic Period: The History and Legacy of the Geologic Era that
Witnessed the Rise of Dinosaurs looks at the development of the era, the
extinction events that preceded it, and how dinosaurs began to evolve in the
Late Triassic. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and
events, you will learn about the Triassic Period like never before.
The Triassic Period: The History and Legacy of the Geologic Era that
Witnessed the Rise of Dinosaurs
About Charles River Editors
Introduction
A List of the Periods
A Mass Extinction
The Triassic’s Chronology
Triassic Geology
Triassic Climate
Triassic Flora
Triassic Fauna
Another Mass Extinction
The Triassic’s Legacy
Glossary
Online Resources
Further Reading
Free Books by Charles River Editors
Discounted Books by Charles River Editors
 A List of the Periods
The following is the list of geological periods and the range of ages in
millions of years ago (Mya):
• Precambrian - 4,600–541 Mya
• Cambrian - 541–485.4 Mya
• Ordovician - 485.4–443.8 Mya - Ending with first major extinction.
• Silurian - 443.8–419.2 Mya
• Devonian - 419.2–358.9 Mya - Ending with second major extinction.
• Carboniferous - 358.9–298.9 Mya
• Permian - - 298.9–251.902 Mya - Ending with third major extinction.
• Triassic - 251.9–201.3 Mya - Ending with fourth major extinction.
• Jurassic - 201.3–145 Mya
• Cretaceous - 145–66 Mya - Ending with fifth major extinction.
• Paleogene - 66–23.03 Mya
• Neogene - 23.03–2.58 Mya
• Quaternary - 2.58 Mya to Present
To help readers understand the relevant periods for the Triassic, the
following list of relatively recent epochs are included because they are more
well-known:
Paleogene Period - 66–23.03 Mya
• Paleocene Epoch - 66–56 Mya
• Eocene Epoch - 56–33.9 Mya
• Oligocene Epoch - 33.9–23.03 Mya
Neogene Period - 23.03–2.58 Mya
 • Miocene Epoch - 23.03–5.333 Mya
• Pliocene Epoch - 5.333–2.58 Mya
Quaternary Period - 2.58 Mya to Present
• Pleistocene Epoch - 2.58 Mya to 11,700 BP
• Holocene Epoch - 11,700 BP to Present
A Mass Extinction
One problem always facing scientists is the possibility that evidence has
been destroyed, revealing the simple fact of logic that a lack of evidence
never disproves a thesis. If scientists were have a time machine, they might
discover that millions of species existed for which we have no current
evidence. One phrase sorely lacking in the vocabulary of many scientists is,
“I don’t know.” In fact, some of the taxonomic genera mentioned in this
book are known only by a few bones found at one location; there is not
enough to reconstruct a complete skeleton. Sometimes a new species might
be named based on one bone or even a fragment, and some such
“discoveries” have been dismissed by later, more careful examination.
If every creature that ever lived had their bodies preserved in one form or
another, then there would be entire mountain ranges made of bones, but
bones are fragile constantly breaking down and decaying. Only a few rare
bones find the right conditions to become fossilized, which is fortunate
enough for scholars, as scientists would never have known about many of
these ancient creatures.
As forests and ancient bodies were laid down after they died, they
contributed to a new layer in the planet’s geological strata. Sometimes,
however, a stratum might become exposed and worn away by rain, wind or
earthquakes, so that it ends up disappearing.
Shallow seas and alluvial plains are some of the best regions for
preserving fossils for future discovery. Creatures that die in other locations
may have easily had their bones destroyed by hungry scavengers, natural
bacteria or weathering.
 It would be impossible to dig up the entire planet looking for ancient
bones, so paleontologists depend on luck that fossils were created and then
later discovered. Once a fossil bed is discovered, skill takes over to make
the most of the find.
At the boundary between the Permian period and the Triassic period,
something happened that resulted in killing off as much as 96% of ocean
species and 70% of land vertebrate species, according to some estimates.
Since ecological niches are more sharply defined on land than in the marine
environment, this amount of biodiversity loss took an especially heavy toll
on land, requiring a far greater time for recuperation than in the oceans. It
took roughly 30 million years - close to 60% of the entire Triassic period -
for ecological networks of terrestrial life to recover fully. This extinction
event is sometimes called the “Great Dying.” It also goes by the name
“Permian-Triassic extinction event,” the “P-Tr extinction,” the “P-T
extinction,” or the “End-Permian Extinction.”
Some sources believe that life rebounded after only 10 million years,
which is still an agonizingly long time. Differences in estimates are based in
part on differences in definitions on what is recovered, but also on the
locations of each study. Near Paris, Idaho, for instance, in Bear Lake
County, marine evidence from more than 250 Mya suggests that local
recovery only took about 2 million years.
It’s also quite possible that there were recurring extinction events which
prolonged the damage done to Earth’s ecosystems, and this may have
happened in what is today Siberia. Some locales show evidence of three
separate phases of annihilation.
The extent of the Great Dying boggles the mind with the sheer numbers
and types of deaths. Tetrapods - four-limbed creatures - virtually
disappeared globally between the latitudes of 30°N and 40°S, and this
region coincides with what is called the “coal gap” - from the P-T
extinction event to the middle of the Triassic. Coal comes from life, and
there was very little of that life or the proper conditions to form coal beds
during that span of time and between those latitudes.
 There were a number of possible causes for the Permian-Triassic
extinction event, including massive volcanic events and meteor impact
events. For answers, scientists have turned to Siberia, one of the largest
regions on the planet, covering 13.1 million square kilometers of
northeastern Asia. If it were a separate country, it would be the largest in the
world. Today, the region is known mostly for its brutally cold winters,
typically averaging −25°C in January. It’s also known as a popular place for
Soviet political prisoner camps.
A little more than half of that area is today covered by thick slabs of
volcanic basalt - frequently called flood basalt. That 7 million square
kilometers contains an estimated 4 million cubic kilometers of volcanic
rock from one event which straddled the P-T boundary.
In an article for LiveScience.com, Becky Oskin wrote that the Siberian
eruptions lasted less than a million years: “Painstaking analysis of rocks
from China and Russia prove the culprit is a series of massive volcanic
eruptions, which flooded ancient Siberia with thick lava flows just before
Earth's worst mass extinction almost 252 million years ago, researchers said
here [San Francisco, California] yesterday (Dec. 11) at the annual meeting
of the American Geophysical Union. Thanks to new computer models of
the eruption's devastating effects, and detailed mapping of rocks deposited
around the time of the mass dying, researchers now have their best case
ever for pinning the extinction on the enormous lava outpouring.”
Estimates by other scientists narrow the extinction event itself to about
60,000 years. Other scientists have found evidence that suggests several
extinction events occurred, one after the other. Henrik Svensen, Sverre
Planke, et al, wrote in their 2009 paper that the Siberian Traps likely
released more than 100,000 gigatons of CO2 over the course of the
eruptions. The paper was titled, “Siberian gas venting and the end-Permian
environmental crisis.” If such an event were to happen today, that would
increase atmospheric carbon dioxide from about 400 ppm (parts-per-
million) to over 18,000 ppm, only 2,000 ppm shy of the NASA maximum
recommended level for their spacecraft. Needless to say, that’s a large
increase.
 Some scientists have suggested that the problem was more one of
releasing toxic sulfur compounds than in releasing CO2. Carbon dioxide is
non-toxic at a broad range of concentrations, up to and beyond 20,000 ppm.
Even NASA allows 20,000 ppm CO2 on their spacecraft for up to an hour.
If this much carbon dioxide were dangerous, they wouldn’t allow it for any
amount of time. When sulfur dioxide is mixed with water, it produces
sulfuric acid - one of the most potent acids known. The volcanic gases
could also have included poisonous fluorine or chlorine.
What works against the carbon dioxide and warming theory is the fact
that temperatures too hot for life could only have come down (with CO2
driving temperature) if life thrived enough to sequester all that extra carbon
dioxide. But the early Triassic is also known as the “coal gap” because
plants did not do much carbon dioxide sequestration. Taking carbon dioxide
out of the air is what gives the planet fossil fuels.
The Siberian Traps occurred at the same time as the mass extinction and
the lingering inability for life to rebound, but carbon dioxide does not
appear to have been the culprit. If anything, extra CO2 should have made
plants far more abundant, like the modern greening of the Earth from only a
meager increase in this vital gas of life.
A massive meteor killed off most of the dinosaurs - all except the avian
species of dinosaurs, so it seems reasonable to consider an earlier impact as
responsible for this extinction event, but there is no evidence of a large
meteor crater occurring right at the Permian-Triassic boundary. There are
some small ones, but not big enough to have created an extinction-level
event.
Of course, one problem with evidence is that nature is capable of
destroying it. As discussed further below, sometimes scientists find only a
few bones and not a complete skeleton of an entire genus (dozens or
hundreds of species), so while scientists know they existed from the few
bones, there is no complete skeleton of even one creature, when millions
likely existed. In the same vein, it’s still possible that a meteor slammed
into Earth with enough power to cause the extinction event, only to leave
little or no evidence that the impact ever happened.
 That’s the essence of one idea presented by Jonathan T. Hagstrum at a
conference, November 16, 2000. He wrote in his abstract, “Oddly, hotspots
tend to occur in near-antipodal pairs. In addition, all sites antipodal to
continental, and likely oceanic, flood basalts for the last 250 m.y. were in
the deep ocean.”
Studies of the ratio between oxygen-16 and oxygen-18 (δ18O) - the two
most common, stable oxygen isotopes - gives scientists a rough idea of
temperature during this period. Equatorial oceans had temperatures greater
than 40°C (104°F), and while that is evidence of the excess heat, there is a
debate over what caused it. As noted above, it wasn’t caused by CO2, even
though there was a sudden abundance of the material (“sudden” on the
geological time scale).
What if all three of these factors came into play? There is evidence of
volcanic activity happening then, and there is also evidence of far warmer
ocean temperatures at that time. Though scientists don’t have evidence of a
huge crater being formed by meteoric impact during that event, craters can
be destroyed over a few million years.
One thesis involves an impact in the Panthalassic Ocean near-antipodal to
the Siberian Traps. According to this idea, a massive asteroid slammed into
Earth, creating a permanent hole in the asthenosphere which separates the
brittle crust from the molten mantle.
The Panthalassic Ocean is now called the Pacific Ocean, but all of the sea
floor that existed at that time has all disappeared into the Earth’s mantle,
subducted at the plate margins. This means that any evidence of damage in
the sea floor has been erased by nature from the movement of tectonic
plates. New plate material has been created to replace the old, moving like a
conveyor belt from mid-ocean ridge to subduction zones at tectonic plate
boundaries.
However, if a large enough meteor struck the Earth in the middle of that
large ocean, it could have punched a hole through the asthenosphere,
through the mantle, and possibly even into the hot, liquid outer core of the
planet. The shockwave from such an impact may have been transferred
entirely through the Earth into the continent on the other side of the world:
Pangaea. A similar effect has been found on Mars.
If a huge enough and dense enough asteroid slammed into Earth with
sufficient force, it could have cracked the Pangaean supercontinent, leading
to the Siberian Traps and the fracturing which later led to the breakup of the
supercontinent into Laurasia and Gondwana, and later into the Americas,
Africa, Eurasia, Australia and Antarctica. At the same time, direct evidence
of the impact itself may not all have been entirely destroyed - a hole
punched in the asthenosphere may have persisted to create the current mid-
Pacific hotspot from which the Hawaiian chain of islands was born.
If such a meteor-driven fracture occurred, it would have led not only to
severely hot lava flows in the region of modern Siberia, but also fractures
all along the Pangaea side of the planet. Underwater cracks could have been
exposed to hot magma, increasing the water temperature locally and
warming up the regional ocean waters sufficiently to make it too hot for
most species. Lava (liquid rock) is expelled from the Earth at temperatures
ranging from 700°C to 1,200°C. Naturally, water would cool off the lava
fairly quickly, but a constant flow of lava might have been enough to
convert cubic miles of cold water into an equal volume of hot water.
As a result, one large asteroid could be responsible for all the current
evidence, including hot equatorial oceans, the Siberian Traps, the Pangaea
rifting which later led to the break-up of the supercontinent, and the
Hawaiian hotspot, which even today is still producing new island material.
The Triassic’s Chronology
Digging into the ground is an act of going back in time. The top layers
were laid down most recently, but the really old stuff lies buried far deeper.
Scientists have gathered information over the last two centuries about the
creatures that lived in each layer of time, and from this, they were able to
create a sequence of species. Later, they were able to add a specific age as
the techniques used to date those ancient bones have become better.
The Triassic period is divided into three epochs: Upper, Middle, and
Lower. When scientists are talking about the “Upper Triassic,” they are also
talking about the “Late Triassic” or most recent part of that period laid
down by the deaths of creatures or plant material. The “Lower Triassic”
refers to the bottom layer of materials, or earliest debris laid down by death,
silt, or accident. Between the “upper” and “lower” epochs sits the “Middle
Triassic.”
The following table lists the faunal stages or geological ages of the
Triassic period. “Faunal” simply refers to animals instead of plants
(“floral”). Each stage has an uncertain beginning and end, with a range of
uncertainty of between 0.6 million-4 million years.
Upper/Late Triassic
Rhaetian - 208.5–201.3 Mya
Norian - 227–208.5 Mya
Carnian - 237–227 Mya
Middle Triassic
Ladinian - 242–237 Mya
Anisian - 247.2–242 Mya
Lower/Early Triassic
Olenekian - 251.2–247.2 Mya
Induan - 251.902–251.2 Mya
It must be remembered that some of the details are largely guesswork. For
example, some species are known only by bone fragments and not complete
skeletons. There may have been countless species that historians known of,
but only from half a skull or a partial femur. Granted, it’s educated
guesswork, but it could be all horribly wrong, and scientists need to keep
such things in mind as they review the little that is known.
The Induan age is defined as the first appearance of the conodont species
named Hindeodus parvus. The conodonts were an entire class of creatures
similar to but unrelated to modern eels. The beginning of this rather short
age is also marked by end of the Permian-Triassic extinction event, defined
by the negative variance of δ18O, a marker of isotope ratios used by
scientists to approximate ancient temperatures.

A picture of fossilized remains of Hindeodus

The oceans and many freshwater bodies remained largely anoxic during
this age, making it impossible for life to thrive. Even fish need oxygen, and
without oxygen dissolved in the water, marine species would not be able to
breathe unless they came to the surface to gulp air.
Archosauromorphs gained two new genera, including Prolacerta of
southern Africa (10 centimeters long), and Proterosuchus (similar to
modern crocodiles) of South Africa and China (2.2 meters long).
Conodonts gained one species, namely Hindeodus parvus, which marked
the boundary between the Permian period and the Triassic, and also the start
of the Induan age. Conodonts had thrived during the Permian, and they
again thrived later in the Triassic, but the entire Conodonta class was wiped
out by the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event.
Temnospondyls gained one genus, the Wetlugasaurus of northern Russia
(1 meter long).
Therapsids that were prominent in the Induan age included the following,
Galesaurus – A carnivorous genus, living in what is now South
Africa, that was a mammal-like cynodont, 80 centimeters long. Its name
means "weasel lizard." It appeared a few hundred thousand years before
the P-T extinction event, according to the current and best dating, and
died out at the end of the Olenekian age.
Lystrosaurus - Herbivorous genus, living in what is now Antarctica,
Russia, South Africa and India. The various species ranged in size from
that of a small cat to about 2.5 meters in length. Its name means "shovel
lizard." This block-headed, sturdy creature appeared some 3 million
years before the P-T extinction event and lived halfway through the
Olenekian age. During the Induan age, Lystrosaurus proved to be the
most common genus of land vertebrates, with an estimated 95% of
terrestrial species. This may well be a level of dominance enjoyed by no
other genus in Earth’s history.

A picture of Lystrosaurus bones

 Dmitry Bogdanov’s rendering of a Lystrosaurus georgi
Regisaurus - Carnivorous genus found in South Africa, from a few
hundred thousand years before the P-T extinction to the end of the
Olenekian age. Reconstruction of the creature shows a strong
resemblance to a modern rat. Length approximately 40 centimeters.

A model of a Regisaurus
Thrinaxodon - Carnivorous genus of cynodont living in South
Africa and Antarctica. In size, it was comparable to a modern fox. This
genus is quite an oddity, showing up in the early Triassic, but also
appearing some 30 million years later, in the Norian age (Late Triassic).
 The dual appearance of Thrinaxodon (~251–247 Mya, and 220 Mya)
brings up important points that make paleontology a difficult science. For
one, nature has not always been cooperative in leaving lots of easy
evidence. Sometimes only a bone fragment is all we have of a species.
That’s not much to go on, and sometimes the educated guesses of experts
are wrong. Quite often, nature destroys nearly all evidence, and very few
individual creatures are honored with the permanence to be discovered
millions of years later. This is like finding half a skeleton of Homo sapiens
and guessing about what the species looked like and how long it lasted.
Sometimes, an entire class or order will remain hidden until that lucky
discovery of one skeleton or imprint in ancient mud.
The Olenekian age is defined as the first appearance of the conodont
species named Neospathodus waageni, and of the ammonites Hedenstroemi
or Meekoceras gracilitatis. During this age, life started to rebound quite
strongly in the region that is now Utah in the United States, but the rest of
the world still suffered for at least another 5-25 million years.
Archosauromorphs gained several new genera, including Augustaburiania
of western Russia (outside of the Siberian Traps), Chasmatosuchus of
western Russia, South Africa and China (2 meters long), Erythrosuchus of
South Africa and Namibia (5 meters long) and the largest predators of its
time, Exilisuchus of Russia, and Garjainia of Russia and South Africa (2
meters long).
Ichthyosaurs - fish-like reptiles - gained 3 new genera, including
Chaohusaurus of China (2 meters long), Grippia of China, Japan, Canada
and Norway (1.5 meters long, resembling modern dolphins), and
Utatsusaurus of British Columbia, Canada and Japan (3 meters long).
Therapsids gained 3 new genera, including Cynognathus of South Africa,
Namibia, Antarctica and Argentina (1.2 meters long), herbivore
Kannemeyeria of Russia, South Africa and Zambia (3 meters long), and
Trirachodon of South Africa, Zambia and Namibia (tiny, 50 centimeters
long).
Some stratigraphers define the Anisian age the first appearance of the
conodont species named Chiosella timorensis. Other stratigraphers prefer to
use a magnetic boundary known as “magnetic chronozone MT1n.” The start
of the Anisian was also the start of the Middle Triassic and end of the
Lower Triassic.
Amphibians gained two genera in the Anisian age, including Cherninia of
India, which looked somewhat like a modern crocodile (4.3 meters long),
and Eryosuchus of northern Russia (3.5 meters long).
Archosaurs gained 4 new genera, including Nyasasaurus of Tanzania (~3
meters long), Sarmatosuchus of Russia, Ticinosuchus of Switzerland and
Italy (~3 meters long), and Zanclodon of Europe.
Therapsids gained another genus, Rhadiodromus of Russia.
Nothosauroids gained 4 genera, including Anarosaurus, Ceresiosaurus of
Switzerland and Italy (3 meters long), Dactylosaurus of Europe, and
Keichousaurus of China (2.7 meters long).
Two new genera were added to Placodonts, including Cyamodus (a
thickly armored swimmer, thought to have fed on shellfish) of Germany
(1.3 meters long), and Paraplacodus of Northern Italy (1.5 meters long).
Thalattosaurians gained one new genus, namely Askeptosaurus of Italy
and Switzerland.
The Ladinian age is defined as the first appearance of the conodont
species named Budurovignathus praehungaricus, and the first appearance of
ammonite species Eoprotrachyceras curionii.
Evolution added one genus to Archosaurs late in the Ladinian age, named
Zanclodon of Europe. There remains some confusion and ambiguity
regarding this genus, however. The name may have been applied to two or
more genera, and more research is needed to clear up the crisis in
identification. Such problems can happen when scientists attempt to
identify a species or genera from evidence that is too scant.
Dinosauromorphs (dinosaur-like creatures) gained one genus, the
Lagosuchus of Argentina (30 centimeters long). Some sources place the
start of this species in the Carnian age, instead of the Ladinian. It can’t be
emphasized enough - such definitions are not a precision science, but partly
an art; this is the best we can hope for with such sparse evidence.

Pavel Riha’s rendering of Lagosuchus

 A skeleton of Lagosuchus
Suchians gained one genus, Batrachotomus of Germany (6 meters long).
Unlike crocodiles, which have large, sprawling bodies and a characteristic
waddle, this genus possessed a more erect stance, allowing it to move at far
faster speeds. It’s somewhat terrifying to imagine a crocodile that could run
like a lion.

Dmitry Bogdanov’s rendering of a Batrachotomus

Therapsids took on one new genus, the Stahleckeria of Brazil, South
America and Namibia, Africa, which at the time were adjacent stretches of
land. This stocky creature grew to 4 meters in length and is estimated to
have weighed 400 kilograms (880 pounds) when full grown.
The Carnian age is defined as the first appearance of the ammonite
species named Daxatina canadensis.
Non-mammalian Therapsids gained 2 genera, including herbivore
Exaeretodon of Brazil and India (1.8 meters long), and Placerias of
Arizona, California and Queensland, Australia (3.5 meters long). Placerias
was a stocky herbivore resembling a modern rhinocerous, except it had two
downward tusks rather than the one central horn of the rhino. Some
stratigraphers place Placerias in the Norian, instead of the Carnian. Until
recently, scientist thought this genus had died out in the Triassic, until
fossils were found in Australia, within the horizon of a later age.
One mammalian Therapsid appeared either late in the Carnian age or
early in the Norian. The Adelobasileus of western Texas is a small shrew-
like creature that is thought to be the link between cynodonts and Triassic
true mammals, and thus the link for all mammals or closely related to the
single, common ancestor.

Nobu Tamara’s depiction of Adelobasileus

Thalattosaurians gained one genus called Miodentosaurus of China (4
meters long). It had short forelimbs, strong hind legs, and a long paddle-like
tail.
 One of the earliest dinosaurs appeared during the Carnian age. The
Staurikosaurus of Brazil (up to 5 meters long) was a semi-upright, bipedal
carnivore, likely quite agile in tracking down its prey. It would look very
much like a miniature Tyrannosaurus rex, a species that would not appear
on Earth for another 165 million years.

A Staurikosaurus skeleton
The Norian age is defined by starting at the base of the conodont biozones
for Metapolygnathus communisti and Metapolygnathus primitius, and at the
base of the ammonite biozones of Klamathites macrolobatus and
Stikinoceras kerri.
Archosauromorphs gained 3 genera, including the ancient, turtle-like
Proganochelys of Greenland, Germany and Thailand (1 meter long);
Basutodon of Lesotho, Africa; and Teratosaurus of Germany (6.2 meters
long).
 Claire Houck’s picture of a Proganochelys skeleton
Dinosauromorphs gained 2 genera, including Dromomeron of the western
United States and northwestern Argentina (1 meter long), and
Eucoelophysis of New Mexico (1.5 meters long).
Here, in the history of Earth, scholars see the transition between
dinosauromorphs and true dinosaurs. One controversial genus appeared in
the Norian, which has researchers disagreeing about its true placement on
the tree of life. This is Agnosphitys of England. Due to a severe lack of
remains, scientists cannot tell what its adult size was and cannot even tell
what kind of diet it was likely to have had.
True dinosaurs gained several genera in this age of the Late Triassic,
including Coelophysis of the United States, South Africa and Zimbabwe (3
meters long); Chindesaurus of the southwestern United States (2.3 meters
long); Eocursor of South Africa (1 meter long); Liliensternus of Germany
(5.15 meters long); and Plateosaurus of northern Europe and Greenland (10
meters long). Liliensternus and Plateosaurus were amongst the largest
dinosaurs during the Triassic.

A Plateosaurus skeleton
Pterosaurs, the flying reptiles, are frequently associated with dinosaurs
but not currently held as directly related to that taxonomic group. This order
gained 3 genera, including Eudimorphodon of Italy (wingspan 1 meter);
Peteinosaurus of Italy (wingspan 0.6 meter); and Preondactylus of Italy
(wingspan 0.45 meter).

Nobu Tamara’s depiction of a Pterosaur

Crocodylomorphs gained one genus, the Saltoposuchus of Europe (1.5
meters long).
Ichthyosaurs gained one genus, Shonisaurus of Nevada (15 meters long).
Placodonts gained one genus, the Psephoderma of central and western
Europe (1.8 meters long).
Mammalia took on 3 new genera, including Eozostrodon of England (10
centimeters long); Kuehneotherium; and Morganucodon of Europe, North
America and China (roughly 15 centimeters long).
Temnospondyls (an ancient form of crocodile-like amphibians) gained 2
genera, including Apachesaurus (0.4 meter long) and Koskinonodon (3
meters long), both of western United States.
 As of 2009, the Rhaetian age had not yet received consensus on a single
definition. In the region of the Tethys Sea, scientists use the base of the
ammonite biozone of Sagenites reticulatus. In the polar regions, where
Sagenites reticulatus is not found, scientists use the base of the biozone of
Cochloceras amoenum.
Ichthyosaurs gained a new genus, the Leptonectes of western Europe.
Dinosauria gained 3 new genera, including Agrosaurus of Australia
(estimated ~3 meters long); Pantydraco of United Kingdom (3 meters long);
and Thecodontosaurus of England (2 meters long). Some controversy
surrounds the few, scant remains that define Agrosaurus. Some scientists
suspect that this genus is actually a subset of Thecodontosaurus found on
the other side of what was Pangaea.
Mammaliaformes gained 3 new genera, including Eozostrodon of United
Kingdom; Haramiya of Greenland (about 12 centimeters long); and
Megazostrodon of southern Africa, especially Lesotho (12 centimeters
long). Megazostrodon possesses a number of non-mammal traits, but some
scientists consider that these are sufficiently minor that this genus may well
represent the final stage in the transition to true mammals from cynodonts.
So, just as dinosaurs were on the verge of taking over the world during their
Jurassic dominance, true mammals were emerging at the smallest levels of
creatures.
The top of the Rhaetian stratigraphic layer, which corresponds to the base
of the Jurassic period’s Hettangian age, corresponds with the first
appearance of ammonite genus Psiloceras. It also corresponds with the
Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, which, though not as destructive as the
extinction event which began the Triassic, remains one of the five biggest
extinction events in Earth’s history.
Triassic Geology
At the start of the Triassic, nearly all of the land surface on Earth
belonged to one supercontinent called Pangaea. The remainder of the planet
was taken up by the Tethys Sea, cradled by Pangaea and the surrounding
Panthalassa Ocean.
 Maps depicting Pangaea over time
No one knows exactly when Pangaea started to break apart, but estimates
range from some time in the Triassic to the middle of the Jurassic.
Moreover, scientists still don’t know what exactly caused the partitioning
that led to the current 7 continents. Scientists agree that it all has something
to do with currents in the Earth’s mantle moving the tectonic plates, but no
one can tell why the currents changed directions or why new rifts were
formed where they did.
The idea that one large meteor fractured Pangaea from an antipodal
impact point seems to hold some promise. It could explain the extreme heat
in the oceans at the Permian-Triassic extinction event, and it could also
explain the thousands of years of eruptions and magma oozing from the
Siberian landscape. It could also explain why Pangaea fractured, much as
the highlands of Mars were fractured by a 3,000-kilometer canyon that
dwarfs Arizona’s Grand Canyon in size, and it could explain why there is
no surface evidence of an impact crater, as the oldest ocean floor in the
Pacific is only about 170–180 million years old, originating in the mid-
Jurassic period. That would mean all of the sea floor evidence has been
swept away, sucked up by the old plate sliding underneath the overlying
plates of East Asia.
Since it was a single large landmass, the interior of Pangaea was
extremely dry. Moisture-laden winds were wrung dry by their trip to the
interior, dropping their rain upon mountain ranges closer to the coasts. The
center of Pangaea was a wasteland that rains could scarcely reach.
One reason historians know that Pangaea existed is because of similar
species or the same species appearing in the rock strata on one continent
and in the same strata on another continent, separated today by one ocean or
another. This indicates that the dinosaurs and other Triassic creatures could
once travel from one side of Pangaea to the other.
According to many scientists, by the end of the Triassic, the huge
continent had started to break apart, creating what scientists have called
Laurasia (the northern continent that includes what is today Eurasia and
North America) and Gondwana (the southern continent that includes what
is today South America, Africa, India, Antarctica and Australia). Once the
separation was complete, the land species growing up on one continent did
not have the ability to move to the other, ushering in a separation that more
greatly diversified the type of life found in the various locations on land.
Many of the tectonic plates which persist today did not yet exist by the
end of the Triassic. For instance, the Arabian plate and Somali sub-plate
were both part of what later became the Africa plate, and that was still part
of the Gondwana plate. The Africa did not fully separate from the South
America until the middle of the Cretaceous, and the Great Rift Valley
fracture that led to the weaning the Arabia and the ongoing split in East
Africa did not start until about 36 Mya.
Triassic Climate
At the dawn of the Triassic, Earth was a landscape riddled with lines and
pockets of bubbling rock, with scorching hot magma from deep within the
Earth. In water, such exposed lava heated up all the nearby environment,
with water swirling with heat by conduction and convection. There was no
escape except to migrate to parts of the ocean not affected by the fractured
Earth. Thus, 96% of species disappeared.
On land, the situation was not much better, but at least land creatures had
a chance to avoid the heat. Wind only blows because of temperature
differences and so long as creatures could avoid Siberia, they had a chance
to steer clear of the worst of the danger. Thus, only 70% of land species
disappeared during the Permian-Triassic extinction event.
One researcher’s compilation of climate proxy data for the Triassic shows
a sharp but brief decline in temperature at the Permian-Triassic extinction
event to the modern level of cold. This would be consistent with the
volcanic winter effect from excessive eruptions, especially in the region of
the Siberian Traps. Proxy records also show a sharp spike in CO2 content,
but nothing like the 18,000 ppm calculated from the Siberian outgassing
estimate mentioned earlier.
Throughout much of the Carboniferous and most of the Permian periods,
CO2 was at extremely low levels. Toward the mid-to-late Permian, carbon
dioxide levels rebounded quite strongly and remained relatively high for
most of the Triassic. Throughout the Permian, temperatures consistently
rose to one of the highest levels in the history of multi-cellular life. This
Pangaea-Permian Hot House was roughly equivalent to the Cretaceous Hot
House some 180 million years later, and considerably warmer than the
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 55.5 Mya.
 Moderate resolution temperature proxies show a rapid recovery of
temperatures after the brief cold of the extinction event. Temperatures
seemed to have remained high for a few million years then cooled
throughout the remainder of the Triassic and into the start of the Jurassic,
then cooling down to modern climate cold. More work needs to be done to
resolve the inconsistencies between the proxy temperatures derived by
different researchers.
There are many popular misconceptions about climate. For instance, the
notion that the Earth warms by the same amount at each location is not
accurate - the tropics tend not to change that much, while the desert regions
experience the widest extremes of temperature variation. The polar regions
experience the most temperature change during an Ice Age, with most of
the extra heat going toward the energy-intensive phase change of melting
ice. During the Triassic, there was likely no ice except in the high-latitude
mountains or in the polar regions during months-long darkness, as that ice
did not persist throughout the year. Even this last possibility was not
entirely likely, because both polar regions had plenty of warmer ocean
currents flowing into them to keep them relatively warm, even during their
dark season.
Another misconception is that today’s global temperature is dangerously
hot. Today’s tropics are likely close to the same temperature they were
throughout much of the Triassic. Desert temperatures in the interior of
Pangaea may have been far hotter than the Sahara today, but other regions
of Pangaea desert, closer to the coasts, were likely very similar to today.
The largest difference was in the polar regions. During the Triassic, the
polar regions were a mild, temperate climate, likely close to that of
America’s Deep South. Today, Earth is still gripped in an Ice Age, and most
of the “cold” is contained at the poles.
Except for the interior of Pangaea, the Triassic climate, after the P-T
extinction event, was very much like that within 40° of the equator in
modern times. This is the region where most people on Earth like to live, so
humans would have likely loved the coastal and tropical climate of Pangaea
during the Triassic.
 During the Early Triassic, the region of the North American Great Lakes
was at or slightly north of the equator. Today’s Florida was several hundred
kilometers south of the equator. What is today the North African coast
stretched along the equator from the American northeast.
Most of what is today South America (from Uruguay to Venezuela) and
Africa (from Lesotho to Morocco) was hot and arid. So was a large portion
of what is today Canada, Greenland and Scandinavia: all desert or semi-
desert. These regions were marked with concentrations of evaporite and
calcrete because of the lack of regular rainfall.
Argentina and Southern Chile, Namibia and South Africa, India,
Antarctica and all of Australia were warm temperate climate, with some
pockets of desert. There were very few instances of coal deposits during
this period - mostly in tropical Europe, North Africa, southern India,
southeast Asia. Southeast Australia had deposits of bauxite and kaolinite.
Modern Florida had moved northward to the equator, which ran through
what is today the center of the Sahara and the northern Arabian peninsula.
All of India and the northernmost part of Antarctica became arid, while
virtually all of Australia remained warm and temperate.
The southern two-thirds of the United States and Mexico were
significantly more tropical and less arid during the Late Triassic. Peat bogs
were becoming more common, giving rise to future coal beds. Coal deposits
from the Late Triassic veritably exploded onto the landscape in the southern
third of South America, South Africa, India, Antarctica, all across Australia,
and throughout Europe and Asia - especially in what is today southeast
Asia. India became warm temperate again, with some pockets of desert
calcrete deposits.
By this time, sufficient geological shifting had occurred to allow some of
the moisture to invade more of the interior. As North America and Africa
separated, the Panthalassa Ocean became smaller by a sufficient amount,
enough to raise sea level significantly, flooding the lowlands of what had
become Laurasia (North America and Eurasia) and Gondwana (South
America, Africa, India, Antarctica and Australia).
 Throughout the entire Triassic, no ice accumulated at either pole because
warm ocean currents made the polar regions too warm for such
accumulation.
Triassic Flora
After the Permian-Triassic extinction event, several divisions of the plant
kingdom were represented by the surviving species.
Lycopodiophyta - A primitive vascular plant that uses spores for
reproduction. Its slender leaves possess only a single vein, unlike the
more complex leaves of seed plants and ferns. This division of Plantae
originated about 428 Mya, during the Silurian period, with some species
persisting to the present.
Cycadophyta - Also known as cycads. Some species resemble
ferns while others resemble palms, but cycads are not related very
closely to either set of plants. These are gymnosperms, or “naked seed”
plants that depend on open air pollination, unlike angiosperms (closed
seeds), which have a more complex series of steps required in
pollination. Like palms, cycads have cylindrical trunks without branches,
and with leaves that sprout directly from the trunk. Older leaves fall off,
leaving only an upper crown of leaves. Cycads originated in the Early
Permian with some species persisting to the present.
Ginkgoales - A taxonomic order of class Ginkgoopsida, of division
Ginkgophyta. A form of tree with a reproductive system that relies on
male fertilization and female ovules from separate plants. There is only
one remaining species, namely Ginkgo biloba. This order originated in
the middle of the Permian period, about 270 Mya.
Equisetales - An order of plants that includes genus Equisetum,
also called “horsetail,” which reproduces by spores instead of seeds. This
order developed in the Late Devonian epoch. Similar to Lycopodiophyta,
the leaves are very slender with only a single vein. In this order, the
leaves are not photosynthetic, depending on the green in the stalk to
convert sunlight, water and CO2 into food. The increasingly dense
spacing of horsetail leaves as they approach the crown of the planet
 inspired John Napier (1550–1617) to create the logarithmic scale used so
much in mathematics and physics.
Ferns - The class of plants known as Polypodiopsida, which
reproduces by the use of spores. These plants first appeared in the Late
Devonian, with many species persisting until the present. The class
includes over 10,000 known species.
Conifers - The division of Plantae known as Pinophyta or
Coniferae. Gymnosperm, cone, seed plant. Today, most of these are trees
with a few shrub species - including cypresses, cedars, firs, Douglas firs,
pines, hemlocks, redwoods, spruces and junipers. Despite the fact that
there are only a small number of species, they remain ecologically
important today. Conifers first appeared during the Late Carboniferous
and continue to thrive today.
Phytoplankton - microscopic plant life in the ocean, had a change of
guard during the Permian-Triassic extinction event. Before the Great Dying,
Archaeplastida (green and red algae) were dominant. After the P-T
boundary, Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) took the lead. Archaeplastida
first originated about 1.6 billion years ago, but Cyanobacteria had been
around for 1.1 billion years longer - since 2.7 billion years ago. Both groups
thrive today, and both use photosynthesis to produce food and to create
oxygen.
Though many species have gone extinct, and peat bogs became
exceedingly rare in the first half of the Triassic, resulting in a “coal gap” in
the fossil record, many plants persisted past the hardships of the two
extinction events which framed the Triassic period.
Coal deposits virtually disappeared from the world starting at the
Permian-Triassic extinction event and going on for several million years.
There was also a sharp drop in the ocean’s level at the same time, which has
only two possible explanations:
1.      Massive evaporation and Ice Age freezing of that moisture as
snow, or
 2.      Mega-tsunamis that flooded inland basins that previously had
remained dry deserts.
There is no evidence of polar ice during either the Permian or the Triassic;
however, there is evidence of large salt deposits in central Canada and
southwest United States. These are the types of deposits one would expect
from a large, inland body of sea water that eventually evaporated. This is
the type of thing that led scientists to discover that the Mediterranean had
been a 3-kilometer deep desert during the Late Miocene epoch, nearly 200
million years later.
Coal is formed from dead and decaying plant material in peat bogs. One
way to disrupt this process would be to adversely change the chemistry of
such bogs, perhaps with salt water. Another way would be for fungal spores
to eat up all of the decaying vegetation. There is evidence that fungal spores
did increase and then decrease around the period boundary. The gap could
also have been aided by a severe lack of plant material from which to create
peat. More evidence is needed to determine what the actual cause might
have been.
Triassic Fauna
Life in the seas was hardest hit by the Permian-Triassic extinction event.
As we saw, 96% of marine species disappeared. The cephalopods with
spiral shells, called ammonites, had been quite abundant and diverse during
the Permian period. The extinction event reduced them to a single line.
After the Great Dying, ammonites regained its earlier diversity, giving rise
to new species every million years or so.
A more modern form of coral appeared, but the reefs they formed were
apparently small compared to the modern reefs or the widespread reef
systems that had existed during the Devonian period.
The family Serpulidae (class Polychaeta) rebounded during the Middle
Triassic. These were a form of tube worm which thrived mostly in
saltwater. They had been around since the start of the Permian and with
some species persisting into the present. Another tube-like creature,
Microconchida (class Tentaculita), which had originated in the Late
Ordovician, became abundant during the Triassic, but died out during the
middle of the Jurassic.
Marine reptiles gained in number and diversity. Sauropterygia (“lizard
flippers”) was particularly well represented from the middle of the Triassic
period, originating in the early Triassic as very small creatures and going
extinct at the end of the Cretaceous. These long-necked ocean species with
powerful hind flippers eventually evolved into the pliosaurs and plesiosaurs
of the Late Triassic and Jurassic. Genera Neusticosaurus and Nothosaur
were especially abundant in the region of the Tethys Sea.
The order Thalattosauria (“ocean lizards”) originated and survived only
during the Triassic, starting with the genus Askeptosaurus.
Order Ichthyosauria (“fish lizard”) originated in the Triassic, thriving
until the Middle Cretaceous. These streamlined creatures looked like a cross
between fish and dolphins.
Genus Saurichthys (order Saurichthyiformes), with a name that meant
“lizard fish” (not to be confused with Ichthyosauria), first appeared in the
earlier part of the Triassic period and went extinct in the Middle Jurassic. Its
long snout was fully a third of its entire body length.
On land, the following is a list of some of the most notable groups of
creatures that thrived during the Triassic period. This is by no means a
comprehensive list of life that existed at the time:
Aetosaur - reptilian order of heavily armored creatures - thrived in the last
half of the Triassic in the western two-thirds of Pangaea.
Cynodont - a suborder of therapsida from which mammals emerged. They
originated in the Late Permian epoch. All living mammals are derived from
this suborder, though there were many taxonomic families that were non-
mammalian, all of which have gone extinct.
Phytosaur - reptilian order of crocodile-like predators - appeared during
the Middle Triassic epoch and disappeared at the end of the period. They
appeared throughout the world.
 Rauisuchia - reptilian set of creatures which walked on upright legs rather
than spread to the side like crocodiles. These creatures were found
throughout the Triassic in Europe and the Americas.
Rhynchosaur - reptilian order of herbivores; they were the most common
plant eaters in many ecosystems from the start of the Triassic. They died out
before the end of the period, about the same time that one plant genus
(Dicroidium) went extinct. These creatures were found throughout the
world.
Temnospondyls - amphibious order of creatures that resembled crocodiles
and thrived during the Triassic. They originated in the Carboniferous period
and are thought by some scientists to have died out in the Middle
Cretaceous.
Theropoda - suborder of dinosaurs with three-toed limbs; they emerged in
the middle of the Triassic and include more than 10,000 species that thrive
in modern times. These, of course, include the avian dinosaurs from which
modern birds were evolved.
Another Mass Extinction
The Triassic period ended as it had started, with a massive extinction.
This was one of the five major extinctions experienced in planet Earth’s
long history. Again, there are several hypotheses for the reason a mass
extinction took place 201.3 million years ago, and each hypothesis has
unanswered challenges, questions which cast doubt on each proposal.
One big problem with claims of extinctions involves proof, or lack
thereof, because nature doesn’t always cooperate with providing evidence,
and sometimes a species with a small population is declared extinct until
one of its members suddenly appears again to be counted. One such
example is the early Devonian coelacanth, rediscovered off the African
coast in 1938. Furthermore, not all species leave available evidence that
they ever existed. Only recently did scientists discover that an entire order
had gone extinct at the end of the Triassic: the conodont. This was a set of
creatures similar to modern eels. Their soft tissue was easily destroyed by
nature, leaving very little evidence, if any, that they ever existed. Their
teeth, however, have been found in many locations, and scientists were
eventually able to piece together an idea of what they looked like.
The fact that an entire taxonomical order went extinct is still remarkable.
It’s important to keep in mind that a species is at the bottom of the tree of
life. A number of species make up a genus, a number of genera make up a
family, and a number of families make up an order. This one extinction - the
conodont - could have included dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of
species. There is too little evidence yet discovered to know for certain, and
it’s quite possible that nobody will ever determine how many species went
extinct. Compare this extinction to one of the modern orders,
Cetartiodactyla, which includes whales, dolphins, porpoises,
hippopotamuses, pigs, llamas, camels, deer, giraffes, sheep, antelopes,
goats, and cattle. If this order went extinct, the planet would be far poorer
for the losses.
A sufficient number of ecological niches were vacated by less robust
species, leaving those niches wide open for dinosaurs to take over. Some of
these niches included amphibians and reptiles.
Scientists estimate that between 23–34% of genera in the oceans and seas
were wiped out. Remember, it’s necessary to take such estimates guardedly,
as there may be many species for which never produce evidence and will
remain forgotten forever. Such estimates are merely based on what is
currently known with existing evidence.
On land, many of the large amphibians and most of the order Archosauria
went extinct. Archosaur survivors included the superorder
crocodylomorpha, from which modern crocodiles evolved. They also
included avemetatarsalia, a major group defined by scientists to include
pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and later all bird species.
Thankfully, some therapsid species survived as well. Within the order
Therapsida, only the cynodont suborder survived, but from cynodonts, the
planet has all its current mammals. The only cynodont family not of the
mammalian lineage - tritylodontidae - died out during the middle of the
Cretaceous, about 40 million years after the end of the Jurassic.
Morganucodonta, a small, shrew-like creature, evolved toward the end of
the Triassic and thrived throughout the Jurassic, finally going extinct during
the early Cretaceous. This creature - the morganucodonta - is thought to
have been the evolutionary precursor of all modern mammals.
From the evidence, some scientists suspect that the extinction event
occurred across a span smaller than 10,000 years. Geologically speaking,
this is rather abrupt, as most geological changes take millions of years to
affect ecological environments.
The loss of diversity in the oceans and seas may have been more from a
drop in the rate of speciation, rather than from any amplification of
extinctions. However, more ancient varieties of fish (actinopterygiians)
gave way to more modern species (neopterygiians), from which most
modern bony fish evolved. Of the dwindling number of marine reptiles, the
family Placochelyidae went extinct about this time.
On land, class Amphibia was hit hard with the major decline of order
Temnospondyli, a group of amphibians resembling small to large
crocodiles. Increasingly, though, today’s scientists suspect that the members
of the order did not go extinct all at once, and that its loss may not even be
tied to the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event. A few members of
Temnospondyli seem to have lasted well into the early Cretaceous. The
families Capitosauria and Plagiosauridae did not extend beyond the end of
the Triassic, though capitosaurs had been in strong decline since the mid-
Triassic.
There are three main theories regarding the cause of the mass extinction.
It’s also quite possible that reality was a combination of all three, creating
stresses on the ecosystem of the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic.
Species tend to go extinct for any number of reasons; they can include
changes in climate, sea level changes and alterations in environmental
chemistry. These can happen over large spans of time giving some species
the ability to adjust, while others may find it impossible to make the
necessary changes.
Sluggish circulation of water could prevent the proper oxygenation of the
seas, so species die of suffocation.
 Geological weathering can also affect ecological niches over time by
changing wind flow and weather patterns. This, of course, takes countless
thousands of years to wear down entire mountain ranges.
The notion of ocean acidification remains problematic. While sulfates can
be toxic and may result in sulfuric acid or other poisonous compounds,
carbon dioxide is not the boogieman the popular culture makes it out to be.
For instance, shellfish evolved under skies with 4,500 to 7,000 ppm of CO2.
So, the idea that carbonic acid made species go extinct requires further,
cautious investigation.
Today, there is a strong belief amongst scientists that the mass extinction
at the end of the Cretaceous was caused by impact at the Chicxulub crater
in Mexico. However, no such crater has yet been dated to the Triassic-
Jurassic boundary. Several large impacts did occur in the late Triassic, but
they were about 13 million years before the period boundary. One of those
impacts can be found at Manicouagan Reservoir in Quebec.
It’s quite possible that a massive meteor shower generated enough
environmental stress to weaken some species, making them more
vulnerable for something else to bring them to extinction.
Multiple impacts have been found dating far closer to the period
boundary, but they remain far too small and individual to have caused
widespread extinctions. Together, they might have created sufficient stress,
but one researcher (Kent, 1998) found that two key craters - Rochechoart
and Manicouagan - were created during two different eras of magnetic
polarity, requiring that they occurred at significantly different times.
Once again, as with the Permian-Triassic extinction event, an asteroid
impact in the Panthalassa Ocean could have occurred and left virtually no
evidence of a crater because of oceanic plate subduction (loss of plate
material being replaced by newer plate). The oldest plate material in the
modern Pacific Ocean was created 20 million years after the Triassic-
Jurassic extinction event, so any evidence of a crater would have since been
melted in the hot magma of the Earth’s mantle.
One of the most frequent and destructive of forces in Earth’s past involves
volcanoes. Volcanoes are destructive in their immediate environment,
slowly seeping across the landscape and killing everything in its path. Also,
volcanoes remain destructive farther afield, sending cubic kilometers of
magma either rocketing skyward to affect the entire planet or blasting
across the local terrain with hurricane force winds of superheated air.
There seem to have always been active volcanoes somewhere on the
planet, slowly spewing a continuous stream of gases, from life-affirming
carbon dioxide to toxic sulfides. Occasionally, they become violent,
exploding vast quantities of rock and gas into the environment.
Some researchers have hypothesized that volcanic and meteoric damages
are sometimes related, with asteroid impacts triggering volcanic eruptions
which prolong the initial damage. This could explain why the impact crater
for such a trigger has not been found. It may well have been destroyed by
the magma and eruptions which followed.
The Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) is one such volcanic
event which seems to have had a major effect on the world at large.
Evidence of CAMP is strewn across a vast area of land, including western
Europe, northwest Africa, north-central Amazon region, and southeastern
United States. During the Triassic, before Pangaea started to break apart, all
of these locations were nestled together, relatively close to one another. At
that point in the past, the Atlantic Ocean did not exist. The thin oceanic
crust which would become the Atlantic Ocean floor was still deep in the
magmatic core of the Earth. Some of the Pacific Ocean floor would have to
disappear before the Atlantic could be born.
The volcanic activity in the CAMP region may have been involved in the
eventual break-up of Pangaea, and the subsequent break-up of Laurasia and
Gondwana, but it’s still unclear what might have triggered the CAMP
activity. Some scientists have pointed out that some of the volcanic activity
dates to a time long after the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, yet some
occurred long before.
One problem with creating a hypothesis is that current dating techniques
are not yet perfect. Improved dating techniques have revised the temporal
placement of some events, making it seem that volcanic activities straddled
the period boundary. It may be possible that future refinements in dating
further change the picture of events and their causes.
Whatever the cause of the extinctions, they remain a humbling warning
that life is precious, and that it can be taken away in an instant or subjected
to forces that may start slow but become unstoppable.
After the life-shattering event or events ended the Triassic, dinosaurs were
now free to become the new, dominant life form on land. It was a
dominance they kept for 135 million years.
The Triassic’s Legacy
Locked between two major extinction events, the Triassic gave the world
two chances to start over, wiping the slate clean enough to give smaller
species a chance they would otherwise never have had. Due to the first,
some of the surviving life evolved into the dinosaurs, and some evolved
into creatures which eventually led to mammals, primates, and humans. The
second Triassic mass extinction cleared the stage so that dinosaurs could
dominate the Jurassic and Cretaceous, while mammals developed more
fully and with greater diversity.
Today, the Triassic’s legacy can be found in every mammal, including
humans, cats, dogs, cows, horses, dolphins, whales, deer and many more.
The Triassic is also responsible for all of the birds that live on the planet
today, including finches, sparrows, chickens, eagles and many others. At
one time, scientists thought birds were a new species which came during the
Cretaceous or earlier, but now they realize that all of the dinosaurs were
more closely related to modern birds, and that avian dinosaurs are the only
taxonomic group of thunder lizards to survive the major extinction event at
the end of the Cretaceous.
Though the Triassic did not have any of the famous dinosaur species
found in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, more people have gained an
appreciation for the science which helps explain this part of the planet’s
history. Indeed, the Triassic was a learning experience for life itself. DNA
became programmed with greater complexity and refinement that
ultimately led to people with critical thinking skills, and the development of
language and civilization.
 Glossary
Ammonitids n. - A subclass of marine mollusc that thrived with 7 orders
and dozens of genera from the early Devonian Period, through the
Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic and the full duration of the
Cretaceous, dying out at the same time as most dinosaur species. They had
shells that were spiral in form.
Archosauromorphs n. - A group of ancient reptiles that were linked
more closely to archosaurs (a group which included dinosaurs, crocodilians
and even birds), but not lepidosaurs (a group containing snakes, lizards and
the like).
climate n. - The average conditions of weather for a region. This is
typically measured as the average over a period of time, like 30 years. One
famous quote helps to define the difference between climate and weather:
“Climate is what on an average we may expect, weather is what we actually
get” - Andrew John Herbertson, Outlines of Physiography, circa 1901.
Cynodont n. - A group of Therapsids that includes all mammal species,
their extinct ancestors and species closely related to mammals. The name
means “dog tooth.”
Dinosauromorphs n. - A group of archosaurs which includes all
dinosaurs and many creatures which remain more closely related to
dinosaurs than to pterosaurs. Today, the only surviving group of
dinosauromorphs is birds.
Ichthyosaurs n. - A marine order of class Reptilia which means literally
“fish lizard.”
Mammaliaform n. - A mammal-shaped creature typically characterized
by four limbs, body hair, mammary glands and lactation, baby teeth
replaced by adult teeth and warm blooded.
Mya abbr. - Abbreviation for “millions of years ago.”
Nautiloidea n. - A subclass of marine cephalopods which were, for
millions of years, a large and diverse group of creatures. Today, there are
only a handful of species remaining. Early in the history of multi-cellular
life, they were a major predator. They first appeared in the Late Cambrian
Period and continued up until the present.
Nothosauroids n. - An order of slender, marine reptiles with webbed feet,
that lived only during the Triassic.
Ornithischians n. - An order of largely herbivorous Dinosauria with a
name that means “bird-hipped.” This order is only distantly related to
modern birds, which are Theropod Dinosuria, in a different taxonomical
order. These land animals are thought to have traveled in herds.
Ornithopod n. - A suborder of the order Ornithischians (which see).
These are a group of bipedal herbivores found throughout the world.
paleobiology n. - A relatively new field in science which studies the
evolution of life throughout ancient times. This includes attempts to
reconstruct the tree of life’s history.
paleontology n. - The study of fossils and geological environments prior
to the Holocene, our current interglacial of the Pleistocene Ice Age.
Placodonts n. - An extinct order of ocean reptiles.
Plesiosaurs n. - An order of marine reptiles noted for their broad, flat
shape and typically short tail. Instead of legs, they had four long flippers.
Pterosaurs n. - An order of flying reptiles. Skin, muscle and other tissue
was stretched from the creature’s ankles to the end of a significantly longer
fourth finger. They lived from the middle of the Triassic to the end of the
Cretaceous - a span of 162 million years.
speciation n. - The splitting of individual species into new and separate
species through evolution.
Suchians n. - A group of archosaurs including the larger portion of
pseudosuchians (crocodiles, similar creatures and all of their extinct kin).
Synapsids n. - A major taxonomic clade that included the order
Therapsida (see Therapsids), as well as Sphenacodontidae family,
Edaphosauridae family, Ianthodon genus, Caseidae family, Eothyrididae
family, Varanopidae family and Ophiacodontidae family.
 taxonomical classification n. - A method of organizing life forms into
groups by similar traits which may likely indicate evolutionary
relationships. A structure of organization like a tree with branches, with all
life at the top, followed by more detailed groupings: domain, kingdom,
phylum, class, order, family, genus and species.
Temnospondyls n. - An order of tetrapods quite often considered by
taxonomists to be ancient forms of amphibians, a few of which persisted
into the Cretaceous period.
tetrapods n. - A broad type of vertebrate creature with four limbs, either
four legs, four fins, or two legs and two arms.
Thalattosauria n. - An order of marine reptiles with paddle-like tails and
slender bodies that lived only during the Triassic.
Therapsids n. - An order of Synapsids that gave rise to mammals and to
the creatures that were the ancestors of mammals.
Theropods n. - A suborder of Dinosauria noted for their three-toed limbs
and hollow bones. Many of this suborder are famous carnivores, but some
later species became omnivores, herbivores, insectivores and piscivores.
Birds derive from a small specialized group of therapods. Notable examples
of the larger carnivores are Tyrannosaurus, Spinosaurus,
Carcharodontosaurus, and Giganotosaurus. One smaller carnivore is also
quite famous, namely Velociraptor (a movie star of the Jurassic Park
franchise).

Online Resources
Other books about the Triassic Period on Amazon
Other books about ancient history by Charles River Editors

Further Reading
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