48 Fun Facts About Triassic

The Triassic is the first period of which geological era?

Mesozoic means 'middle life', a name coined in 1840 for the fossils lying between ancient and recent forms; mass extinctions mark both its start and its end.

Which period came immediately after the Triassic?

Jurassic: the extinction that closed the Triassic removed most of the big crocodile-line reptiles, and dinosaurs took over the land in the period that followed.

How long did the Triassic last?

50 million years makes it the shortest of the three periods of the dinosaur era, yet dinosaurs never dominated it: their reign came afterwards.

The name Triassic refers to a 'triad' of what?

German rock layers: the three had been treated as separate formations until 1834, when a saltworks inspector argued from their fossils that they recorded a single span of time.

Who named the Triassic in 1834?

Friedrich Alberti was a saltworks official, not a professor: in the 1820s his own reading of the ground told him where to drill for salt, and he struck it.

A shallow sea flooded central Europe in the Middle Triassic, leaving thick, shell-packed beds of what?

Limestone: the sea was so nearly cut off from the open ocean that at times it turned to brine, and salt settled out between the shell beds.

Which supercontinent dominated the globe during the Triassic?

Pangaea stretched almost from pole to pole in the shape of a giant C, and it later tore apart into Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south.

What was the Triassic climate like across most of the supercontinent's interior?

Hot and dry: the interior lay too far from any sea for moist air to reach it, so deserts spread across the land.

Which mass extinction opened the Triassic?

The end-Permian event was the most severe mass extinction on record, wiping out most species in the sea, so the Triassic world was restocked by the descendants of a few survivors.

The extinction that opened the Triassic is popularly known by what name?

The Great Dying earned its name by killing most species in the sea, among them the last of the trilobites.

Which volcanic province is blamed for the extinction that opened the Triassic?

The Siberian Traps were not one volcano but floods of lava that buried a vast swathe of Siberia, and the gases they gave off are blamed for turning the oceans acidic and starving them of oxygen.

No deposits of which resource are known from the start of the Triassic, a 'gap' to geologists?

Coal starts as peat, and the gap ran on until peat-forming plants returned in the Middle Triassic; one leading explanation is that the extinction had killed off every plant suited to peat swamps.

During the Triassic, the contrast between one vast landmass and one global ocean drove what extreme weather?

Megamonsoons are thought to have arisen because so much land heated and cooled far faster than the sea, reversing the winds with the seasons and soaking the coasts each summer.

Which rainy Triassic episode began around 234 million years ago?

The Carnian Pluvial Event is blamed on a burst of volcanic warming, and dinosaurs, until then rare, spread and diversified in its wake.

Early Triassic archosaurs split into a crocodile line and a bird line; what is the bird line called?

Avemetatarsalia started as the minor branch, yet it produced the dinosaurs and, through them, every bird alive, which is why a crocodile's closest living relatives are birds.

Which single vast ocean surrounded the Triassic supercontinent, covering most of the rest of the globe?

Panthalassa covered most of the planet, while the much smaller Tethys filled the bay in the supercontinent's side and became the seam along which it later split.

Which Triassic newcomers were the first vertebrates ever to fly?

Pterosaurs took to the air on wings of skin stretched from one hugely elongated fourth finger, tens of millions of years before the first bird or bat.

Nyasasaurus, a fossil that may be the oldest known dinosaur, spent about 80 years where before it was formally named?

A museum collection: the scientist who first studied the bones in the 1950s never published his work, so when the name finally became official he was listed as an author, years after his death.

Which tusked plant-eater became by far the most common land vertebrate of the Early Triassic?

Lystrosaurus, a squat burrower with a face like a bulldog with tusks, came through the extinction when dozens of its relatives did not, and its fossils far outnumber any other land animal's in rocks of the time.

One Triassic plant-eater's fossils in Africa, India and Antarctica became evidence for which theory?

Continental drift: a land animal could not have crossed open ocean, so when its bones turned up in Antarctica at the end of the 1960s they showed that the three lands had once been joined.

The cynodonts of the Triassic were the direct ancestors of which living animals?

Mammals: with archosaurs ruling the daylight, the first ones stayed small and probably nocturnal, a night shift that may have pushed them towards fur and warm blood.

The Triassic reptile Tanystropheus is famous for what extreme feature?

A neck longer than its body: it was nearly three times the length of the trunk yet held just 13 bones, and nostrils on top of its snout and interlocking fangs mark it as a hunter that ambushed fish in the water.

Monte San Giorgio, a UNESCO-listed trove of Triassic marine reptiles, lies where Italy meets which country?

Switzerland: the mountain was once a quiet arm of the sea whose oxygen-starved bottom water kept scavengers away, so fish and reptiles that sank into the mud were preserved whole.

Ichthyosaurs of the Triassic seas evolved a body shape like which living animals?

Dolphins: ichthyosaurs were reptiles that returned to the sea, yet they evolved the same streamlined body and flippers, breathed air and gave birth to live young in the water.

The giant Triassic marine reptile Shonisaurus is the state fossil of which US state?

Nevada: dozens of the whale-sized reptiles lie together in one canyon there, nearly all of them big adults or newborns, which suggests they gathered in that spot to breed.

Proganochelys, of the Late Triassic, is among the oldest known members of which living reptile group?

Turtles: Proganochelys already had a complete shell, but a slightly older fossil from China has only the belly plate, which its finders take to mean the underside of the shell evolved first.

Mastodonsaurus, a Triassic swamp predator up to six metres long, was what kind of animal?

An amphibian: Mastodonsaurus hunted from ambush in lakes and swamps much as crocodiles do now, and it grew so heavy that adults probably could not haul themselves onto land.

The earliest known forerunner of which modern amphibians lived in the Early Triassic?

Frogs: Triadobatrachus, found in Madagascar, had a froglike head but kept a short tail and a long backbone, and it could not yet jump.

Hybodonts, the dominant fish of Triassic rivers and seas, were close relatives of which living animals?

Sharks: hybodonts, told apart by a spine in front of each back fin, ruled fresh and salt water alike and lasted until the extinction that ended the dinosaurs, by when modern sharks had replaced them.

Which plant group diversified in the Late Triassic yet survives today as a single species?

Ginkgoales survive only as Ginkgo biloba, a tree so rare in the wild that it was long unclear whether any wild ones were left, though people have grown it in China for centuries and now plant it on streets worldwide.

Coelophysis, one of the earliest known dinosaurs, was what sort of animal?

A small bipedal carnivore: little bones inside adult skeletons, long shown as proof that Coelophysis ate its own young, proved to be small crocodile relatives, though whether it ever ate its own kind is still argued.

Hundreds of Coelophysis skeletons came from one quarry at which site, also Georgia O'Keeffe's summer home?

Ghost Ranch: a crew from the American Museum of Natural History struck the bone bed in 1947, a tangle of skeletons from animals that may all have died together in a flood or a drought.

Which sea creatures barely survived the extinction that opened the Triassic, then quickly refilled the seas with new forms?

Ammonites lost almost every kind in the extinction, yet the few survivors rebounded quickly, and every later ammonite descends from them.

Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus, among the earliest dinosaurs, come from which country?

Argentina: both come from the Ischigualasto badlands, where dinosaurs some 230 million years old are far outnumbered by the bones of other animals, most of them squat plant-eaters.

Ischigualasto Provincial Park is nicknamed what for its lunar-looking landscape?

UNESCO listed it with neighbouring Talampaya as a World Heritage Site in 2000.

Which long-necked plant-eater, nicknamed the 'Swabian lindworm', is the most common dinosaur in Europe's Triassic rocks?

Plateosaurus adults stopped growing at anything from under five to ten metres long, a looseness more like a modern cold-blooded reptile's than a typical dinosaur's.

Postosuchus, an apex predator of Late Triassic North America, belonged to which archosaur lineage?

Pseudosuchia, the crocodile line, supplied the top land predators of the Triassic: Postosuchus was far bigger than the meat-eating dinosaurs that lived beside it.

The petrified logs of Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park come from which colourful rock unit?

Chinle Formation: its rivers buried the fallen trees so fast and so deep that they could not rot, and quartz slowly took the place of the wood; the same banded beds colour the Painted Desert.

Which giant crocodile-like reptiles are among the most common animal fossils in Arizona's Petrified Forest?

Phytosaurs looked and lived like crocodiles but breathed through nostrils set up beside their eyes, not at the tip of the snout, and the whole group died out when the Triassic ended.

Which Canadian province holds the ring-shaped Manicouagan crater, once blamed for the end-Triassic extinction?

Quebec: the impact was a suspect in the 1980s, but better dating put it at about 214 million years ago, some 13 million years too early to have killed anything at the end of the Triassic.

Which volcanic event, tied to the supercontinent's rifting, is the leading suspect for the end-Triassic extinction?

The Central Atlantic Magmatic Province erupted along the rift where the supercontinent was tearing apart, so its remains now lie on four continents, among them the Palisades cliffs beside the Hudson River.

Which two marine reptile groups survived the end-Triassic extinction?

Ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs alone swam on into the next period, but only just: the ichthyosaurs were cut to a handful of lineages, lost their giants and never regained their old variety.

After the end-Triassic extinction cleared their rivals, dinosaurs ruled the land until the close of which period?

Cretaceous: dinosaurs ran the land for about 135 million years after the Triassic, so the true Age of Dinosaurs only began once the period that first produced them was over.

Which animals were already ancient when the Triassic began?

Coelacanths were already about 160 million years old, and far from fading they were near a peak: no later age has yielded as many kinds as the Early Triassic.

The stone logs of Arizona's Petrified Forest are mostly the remains of what kind of tree?

Conifers: most belong to a single extinct species, and they look sawn into neat sections because the quartz that replaced the wood is brittle and snapped cleanly when the land was later pushed up.

Which palm-like plants, common in Triassic forests, still grow in warm regions today?

Cycads look like palms but are no relation: they bear cones, not flowers, and most kinds rely on one particular beetle to carry their pollen.

Atopodentatus, a Triassic sea reptile with a hammer-shaped snout, is the earliest known marine reptile to eat what?

Algae: the front edge of its hammerhead carried chisel teeth for scraping the growth off rocks, and a mesh of needle teeth behind strained the loosened scraps out of the water.

Sharovipteryx, a small Triassic glider, carried its main wing on which part of its body?

Its hind legs: it was first named Podopteryx, 'foot wing', because its main wing sat behind it on the back legs, the reverse of every bird and bat.