Knjigice
Learn-about book · Dinosaurs & space
The Triassic
The world that grew back
Also in: Trias (Slovenian) · Trias (Slovak)
The World Starts Over
Two hundred and fifty-two million years ago, Earth almost emptied. Most kinds of sea animals were gone. Then, slowly, life began again.
The fifty-one million years that followed are called the Triassic: the long morning after the worst day in Earth's history.
1
One Continent, One Ocean
All the land was joined together in one enormous continent: Pangaea. One ocean wrapped around it.
Rain rarely reached the middle, so the heart of the world was red desert. You could have walked from the South Pole to the North Pole without ever crossing the sea.
2
A World Without Flowers
No daisies. No grass. Not one flower anywhere on Earth.
Triassic green came from ferns, conifers, cycads and ginkgoes. They made spores or bare seeds instead of blossoms. The first flower was still more than a hundred million years away.
3
Forests of Forked Leaves
In the southern half of Pangaea, one plant grew almost everywhere: Dicroidium (say dye-CROY-dee-um). Every leaf split in two, like a tuning fork.
Its seed-fern forests shaded the south for fifty million years. Then it disappeared completely.
4
Horsetails Taller Than a House
Along Triassic rivers stood Neocalamites: horsetails with hollow, ringed stems up to ten metres tall, like a forest of green drinking straws.
Their relatives still grow by ponds today. Most of them only reach your knee.
5
Trees Turned to Stone
In Arizona lie whole Triassic conifer trunks, 225 million years old and turned into coloured stone.
Alive, those trees grew up to sixty metres tall, as high as a twenty-storey building. Their fallen logs now shine with quartz in red, purple and gold.
6
Caught in Golden Resin
Triassic conifers dripped sticky resin. In rock in the Italian Alps, tiny droplets of it were found with animals stuck inside: two mites and a fly, 230 million years old.
Each one is smaller than a grain of salt. They are the oldest creatures ever found in amber.
7
The Beaked Giant
Lisowicia was not a dinosaur and not a mammal. It was a cousin of our own ancestors, with a turtle-like beak and two small tusks.
It was as big as an elephant, about four and a half metres long, and it cropped plants in Poland 210 million years ago.
8
The Dinosaurs Were the Underdogs
The first dinosaurs appeared about 230 million years ago, and nobody would have noticed them. Eoraptor came up to a grown-up's knee and weighed about as much as a large dog.
The Triassic belonged to the crocodile side of the family: bigger, armoured, and everywhere.
9
Something Small and Furry
About 205 million years ago the first mammals appeared, and they were tiny. Morganucodon was ten centimetres long, shorter than your hand, with fur, whiskers and sharp little teeth for eating insects.
It probably hunted at night, while the big animals slept.
10
Longer Than a Bus
Reptiles went back into the sea and grew enormous. Shonisaurus was an ichthyosaur about fifteen metres long, with a narrow snout and four huge paddles.
It was the biggest animal in the Triassic ocean, and it breathed air, just like a whale.
11
It Ended, and It Didn't
Two hundred and one million years ago Pangaea began to tear apart. Volcanoes poured out lava for thousands of years, and most of the crocodile cousins died. The dinosaurs inherited the emptied world.
Now look by the nearest pond: that ringed green horsetail has kept the same shape ever since.
12The End
