1.8: Renovation of the Terrestrial Life

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In the Triassic and early Jurassic, Pangea begins to disintegrate. The Atlantic Ocean (which still grows) opened. The climate was warm at first but very dry, and by the end of the era, it gradually became more convenient to the terrestrial life.

Among the seed plants, there appeared more advanced groups like bennettites, which participate in making savanna type vegetation (without grasses, though, the role of grasses was likely played with ferns, mosses, and lichens). Seeds of many plants were protected by scales or were embedded in an almost closed cupula. Seed protection was the “answer” of seed plants to the appearance of numerous phytophagous insect groups. Some other groups of insects began to adapt to the pollination of seed plants; this was an additional factor to facilitate the growing of seed covers.

Reptilians were still dominated but gradually replaced with various groups of archosauromorphs, the most advanced reptiles by that time, able to move very quickly, typically using only two legs.

Simultaneously run there were processes of “mammalization” and “avification” of reptiles. Ancestors of mammals were now in a small dimensional class and became insectivorous; this is because small herbivorous reptiles were simply physiologically impossible. Plant food is not very nutritional, and reptile feeding apparatus was unable to extract enough calories to support small, presumably more active animal. Giant herbivorous reptiles have less relative surface and therefore need fewer calories. Only turtles are an exception because of their “super-protection”, which however has closed all further ways to improve the organization.

Ancestors of mammals were animals of the size of a hedgehog or less; they continued to improve their dental system, the thermal insulation system, and increase the size of the brain. The result was the emergence of first the first true mammals.

Among “true” reptiles, dinosaurs (birds’ancestors), crocodiles, and pterosaurs (which dominate the air for the next 70 million years) have appeared.

In the seas, there are first diatom algae, that stimulated the zooplankton, and in turn, cephalopods, which dominated throughout the Mesozoic. Also, to replace the extinct by this time mesosaurs, appeared new groups of marine reptiles, for example, notosaurs and molluscivorous placodonts.