Template:Dinoseries Triassic is the first period when first true dinosaurs appeared. It was also the first period of Mesozoic. Triassic spanned from about 251 to 199 million years ago. Beginning and the end of Triassic period was marked by an extinction event. The first flowering plants may have evolved during the Triassic, as did the first flying vertebrates, the pterosaurs. This period is named in 1834 by Friedrich Von Alberti because of the three distinct layers found in Europe and Germany called Trias. Like Jurassic it is separated into three parts: Early-Scythian, Middle (Tr2) and Late (Tr3). It is one of the driest periods in Earths history.
Geography and Climate
During the beginning of the Triassic Era, the Earth had just begun to show signs of recovery. The deserts stopped growing and huge forests of primitive conifer started to re-colonize the land. During this time, there were no separate cotenants, just one giant land mass call Pangaea. Towards the end of the Triassic, it turned into a harsh place…dominated by deserts. The Triassic had already seen many different varieties of ancient reptile come and go, but now out of the dry wilderness had appeared something revolutionary…a family of reptiles destined to shape the course of life on Earth for the next 160 million years.
In time of Triassic, all continents were one big super continent called Pangaea. On eastern side of Pangaea was a huge gulf of the Tethys sea. Everything around it was a huge ocean called Panthalassa. Pangaea however, shifted during the late Triassic period, almost breaking up.
Because of the limited shoreline of this super-continental mass, Triassic marine deposits are globally relatively rare, and they have been most studied in Western Europe. Triassic was generally dry and hot period. There was no ice on aether poles and it seamed that poles had temperate climate. Pangaea had very extreme seasonal changes from very hot, dry summers to wet rain seasons and very cold winters.
A Postosuchus faces off with a Placerias in the modern state of Arizona during late Triassic.
A Triassic beach.
Plant Life
These extreme dry seasons did not made plant life any less successful than today. Dominant plants included cycads and seed plants. In northern hemisphere, conifers flourished. While on the southern hemisphere was dominant seed fern tree. Center of the continents was very dry huge desert with very little or no plant life.
Animals
After Permian extinction event most synapsids died out, being replaced with archosaurs. There was a variety of strange sea reptiles out in the sea, and the first pterosaurs raised to the skies. First were dinosaurs slowly taking over from crocodilian beasts that ruled. However, at the end of Triassic, shifting of the continents caused massive extinction where many species were affected, making way for the time of the dinosaurs.
The Lystrosaurus was one of the dominant animals during the early Triassic.
Invertebrates
Fish
Pterosaurs
Marine Reptiles
Dinosaurs
Rauisuchians
Dicynodonts
Other animals
- Euparkeria
- Cynodont
- Therocephalian