Terrestrial reptiles and the first mammals
- Key People:
- Gideon Algernon Mantell
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On land the vertebrates are represented in the Triassic by labyrinthodont amphibians and reptiles, the latter consisting of cotylosaurs, therapsids, eosuchians, thecodontians, and protorosaurs. All these tetrapod groups suffered a sharp reduction in diversity at the close of the Permian; 75 percent of the early amphibian families and 80 percent of the early reptilian families disappeared at or near the Permian-Triassic boundary. Whereas Early Triassic forms were still Paleozoic in aspect, new forms appeared throughout the period, and by Late Triassic times the tetrapod fauna was distinctly Mesozoic in aspect. Modern groups whose ancestral forms appeared for the first time in the Middle and Late Triassic include lizards, turtles, rhynchocephalians (lizardlike animals), and crocodilians.
The mammal-like reptiles, or therapsids, suffered pulses of extinctions in the Late Permian. The group survived the boundary crisis but became virtually extinct by the end of the Triassic, possibly because of competition from more-efficient predators, such as the thecodonts. One of the best-known of this group was Lystrosaurus, whose fossils have been found in India, southern Africa, and Antarctica. thus providing evidence that these three landmasses were once connected.
The first true mammals, which were very small, appeared in the Late Triassic (the shrewlike Morganucodon, for example). Although their fossilized remains have been collected from a bone bed in Great Britain dating from the Rhaetian Stage at the end of the Triassic, the evolutionary transition from therapsid reptiles to mammals at the close of the Triassic is nowhere clearly demonstrated by well-preserved fossils.
The first dinosaurs
First encountered in the Early Triassic, the thecodonts became common during the Middle Triassic but disappeared before the beginning of the Jurassic. Typical of this group of archosaurs (or “ruling reptiles”) in the Triassic were small bipedal forms belonging to the pseudosuchians. Forms such as Lagosuchus were swift-running predators that had erect limbs directly under the body, which made them more mobile and agile. This group presumably gave rise to primitive dinosaurs belonging to the saurischian and ornithischian orders during the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic. The early dinosaurs were bipedal, swift-moving, and relatively small compared with later Mesozoic forms, but some, such as Plateosaurus (see the ), reached lengths of 8 metres (26 feet). Coelophysis (see the ) was a Late Triassic carnivorous dinosaur about 2 metres (6 to 8 feet) long; its fossils have been found in the Chinle Formation in the Petrified Forest National Park of northeastern Arizona in the United States. The dinosaur group was to achieve much greater importance later in the Mesozoic, resulting in the era being informally called the “Age of Reptiles.”
Flying reptiles
Some of the earliest lizards may have been the first vertebrates to take to the air. Gliding lizards, such as the small Late Triassic Icarosaurus, are thought to have developed an airfoil from skin stretched between extended ribs, which would have allowed short glides similar to those made by present-day flying squirrels. Similarly, Longisquama had long scales that could have been employed as primitive wings, while the Late Triassic Sharovipteryx was an active flyer and may have been the first true pterosaur (flying reptile). All these forms became extinct at the end of the Triassic, their role as fliers being taken over by the later pterosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous.
Plants
Land plants were affected by the Permian-Triassic crisis, but less so than were the animals, since the demise of late Paleozoic floras had begun much earlier. The dominant understory plants in the Triassic were the ferns, while most middle-story plants were gymnosperms (plants having exposed seeds)—the cycadeoids (an extinct order) and the still-extant cycads and ginkgoes. The upper story of Triassic forests consisted of conifers; their best-known fossil remains are preserved in the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation.
While extensive forests did exist during the Triassic, widespread aridity on the northern continents in the Early and Middle Triassic limited their areal extent, which resulted in generally poor development of floras during this period. However, in the Late Triassic the occurrence of water-loving plants, such as lycopods (vascular plants now represented only by the club mosses), horsetails, and ferns, suggests that the arid climate changed to a more moist monsoonal one and that this climatic belt extended as high as latitude 60° Ν. Subtropical to warm-temperate Eurasian flora lay in a belt between about 15° and 60° N, while north of this belt were the temperate Siberian (Angaran) flora, extending to within 10° of the Triassic North Pole. In the southern continents the Permian Glossopteris and Gangamopteris seed fern flora, adapted to cool, moist conditions, were replaced by a Triassic flora dominated by Dicroidium, a seed fern that preferred warm, dry conditions—which indicates major climatic changes at the Permian-Triassic boundary. Dicroidium, a genus of the pteridosperm order, was part of an extensive Gondwanan paleoflora that was discovered in the Late Triassic Molteno Formation of southern Africa and elsewhere. This paleoflora extended from 30° to well below 60° S. Few fossil remains exist from the Triassic for the equatorial zone between 15° N and 30° S.
In the oceans the coccolithophores, an important group of still-living marine pelagic algae, made their first appearance during the Late Triassic, while dinoflagellates underwent rapid diversification during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. Dasycladacean marine green algae and cyanobacteria were abundant throughout the Triassic.
Triassic geology
Significant geologic events
The Triassic Period is characterized by few geologic events of major significance, in contrast to the subsequent periods of the Mesozoic Era (the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods), when the supercontinent Pangea fragmented and the new Atlantic and Indian oceans opened up. The beginning of continental rifting in the Late Triassic, however, caused stretching of the crust in eastern North America along the Appalachian Mountain belt from the Carolinas to Nova Scotia, resulting in normal faulting in this region. There, grabens (fault-bounded basins) received thick clastic (rock fragment) sequences from the erosion of the nearby Appalachians, which were later intruded by igneous dikes and sills. In similar fault-controlled basins between Africa and Laurasia, evaporite deposits were formed in arid or semiarid environments as seawater from the Tethys Sea periodically spilled into these newly formed troughs and then evaporated, leaving behind its salts. Evaporites of Late Triassic and Early Jurassic age in Morocco and off eastern Canada were apparently deposited in such tectonically formed basins.
Mountain building was restricted during the Triassic, with relatively minor orogenic activity taking place along the Pacific coastal margin of North America and in China and Japan. The unmetamorphosed nature of the Triassic rocks of the Newark Group, a rock sequence in eastern North America known for its dinosaur tracks and fossils of freshwater organisms, indicates that its sediments were deposited after the main phase of the Appalachian orogeny in the late Paleozoic.