Word: triassic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When these terrestrial reptiles first appeared 200 million years ago near the end of what geologists call the Triassic Period, tropical or subtropical forests covered much of the landscape. The continents were gathered in a single primordial landmass called Pangaea. Initially, the dinosaurs were relatively small and vulnerable, about the size of ponies. Many of them undoubtedly fell victim to voracious, crocodile-like reptiles called phytosaurs. But by using almost every evolutionary stratagem, they proliferated in number and diversity. Some developed thick protective plating, comparable to that of modern-day armadillos. Ankylosaurus had armor on its skull, knobby stubs over...
...scientists to identify the 2½-in.-long fossil, Paleontologist Edwin Colbert, of the American Museum of Natural History, last week announced that it was a bit of jaw bone from a 3 to 4 ft. salamander-like creature that lived about 200 million years ago in the early Triassic period. It was the first evidence that land vertebrates had roamed Antarctica when its climate was warm...
What's more, the Antarctic animal belonged to a group of long-extinct freshwater amphibians called Labyrinthodonts, which are known to have lived in both Australia and South Africa in the early Triassic period. The discovery thus lent support to those who believe that Antarctica, Australia, South America and India were once a single supercontinent, called "Gondwanaland,"* that broke up and drifted apart. Creatures like the labyrinthodonts, the continental drifters argue, would not have evolved separately on such isolated continents as Antarctica and Australia...
...bones are of reptiles which lived during the Middle Triassic Period, 170 million years ago. It will take the museum several years to prepare for display...
Soon scientific circles were abuzz with the find. The discovery was the first real proof of what coelophysis was like. Scientists had long suspected that something very much like him lived in the Triassic Period, but they had only a few bone fragments to go on. Now, the diggers believe that they can reassemble coelophysis from his pointed nose to the tip of his long tail. If so, they can fill in a tremendous gap in the study of dinosaur evolution...