Browsing the "Triassic" Category

The Triassic period is a division of earth’s history spanning from around 252 to 201 million years ago, and during which global faunas were radically reorganised in the wake of the Permian mass extinction. The climate of the Triassic was typically arid and hot. During this period, the supercontinent of Pangaea began to gradually break apart, opening the Tethys Ocean. Recovery from the Permian mass extinction lasted up to 10 million years. In the oceans, surviving invertebrates including corals, cephalopods (such as ammonites) and echinoderms began to diversify. Marine reptiles became abundant and reached colossal sizes by the end of the Triassic. On land, archosaurs, a group of reptiles including crocodilians and dinosaurs, began to flourish. Mammal-like reptiles, on the other hand, became smaller and less diverse. The end Triassic is also characterised by a mass extinction event. Around 76% of all species, including the conodonts (a successful group of jawless fish), many archosaurs (with the notable exception of dinosaurs) and large amphibians were wiped out.

Cretaceous

Episode 85: Ichthyosaurs

Published on January 7th, 2018 | by David Marshall

Ichthyosaurs are large marine reptiles that existed for most of the Mesozoic Era. The most familiar forms superficially represent dolphins, but some earlier ichthyosaurs were more eel like. They could attain huge proportions, with some genera [&hellip... Read More


Mesozoic

208-million-year-old giant amphibian discovered in Greenland

Published on June 17th, 2017 | by David Marshall

A new species of Cyclotosaur, a giant salamander-like amphibian, has been described from the Late Triassic rocks of East Greenland. Cyclotosaurs are temnospondyl amphibians, known from other Late Triassic deposits in Germany, Poland and Svalbard, but [&hellip... Read More


Triassic

Episode 74: Early Archosaurs and Teleocrater

Published on April 12th, 2017 | by Liz Martin-Silverstone

We have a pretty good idea about how different dinosaur groups evolved, and how they are related (although anyone who has been following the recent dinosaur relationship shake-up knows this is not quite as clear as [&hellip... Read More


Cretaceous

SeAVP Conference 2016

Published on June 2nd, 2016 | by Caitlin Colleary

The Southeastern Association of Vertebrate Paleontology (SeAVP) conference took place on May 16 at the Virginia Museum of Natural History (VMNH) in Martinsville, VA. The conference included students and faculty from nearly a dozen institutions from [&hellip... Read More


Mesozoic

Episode 64: When life nearly died

Published on May 29th, 2016 | by David Marshall

Around 250 million years ago, the largest biotic crisis the world has ever known occurred. The Permo-Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME) was an event that saw the loss of up to 95% of all species. The extinction [&hellip... Read More


Mesozoic

New Triassic reptile from Brazil

Published on March 15th, 2016 | by Liz Martin-Silverstone

Archosauriforms are some of the most well studied fossils in existence, including birds, crocodiles, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and their ancestors, first originating in the early Triassic. While this group has always been well studied, our understanding of [&hellip... Read More


Cretaceous

Episode 55: Pterosaurs

Published on November 15th, 2015 | by Liz Martin-Silverstone

Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to achieve powered flight, and lived in the skies above the dinosaurs during the Mesozoic. They’re often mistakenly identified as dinosaurs, but are in fact a separate, closely related group. This [&hellip... Read More


Jurassic

Triassic-Jurassic Extinction

Published on August 11th, 2015 | by Liz Martin-Silverstone

A new study out today looks at the question of whether or not geographically widespread species are less likely to become extinct, using the Triassic-Jurassic boundary extinction event. Alex Dunhill from the University of Leeds had [&hellip... Read More


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