THAT the dinosaurs went out with a bang is well known. About 66m years ago a large space rock hit what is now southern Mexico. As a consequence, and with the assistance of some enormous volcanic eruptions on the other side of the planet, the terrible lizards were consigned to history. That left the world open for the rise of mammals. What is less well known is that the dinosaurs themselves rose in circumstances similar to those that felled them. The animals’ long reign through the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods was enabled by another, albeit smaller, period of mass extinction, which happened between 234m and 232m years ago during the Triassic period.
This extinction is thought to have been caused by a period of unstable climate called the Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE), in which the climate went from dry, to wet, to dry again four times over the course of 2m years. As is often the case in matters palaeontological, the effects of such changes are easiest to see at sea, because most...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology https://ift.tt/2HejZcZ
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