The Triassic Period (251 - 205 million years ago)

The Triassic was a time of recovery and diversification after the mass extinction at the end of the Permian. It was getting hotter and dryer but a large part of Australia was under the influence of a monsoonal regime. The continents were still united as a super-continent called Pangaea and there was little to stop tetrapod animals migrating except climate.

Australia's Triassic facts

Position

• Most of Australia was within the high latitudes and the south pole lay in Eastern Australia

Climate

• There were no polar ice caps, so the world’s climate was generally hot and dry with monsoonal polar regions.
• Carbon dioxide levels were about three times higher than today.

Setting

• Coal swamps had virtually disappeared. Most of Australia was land but some large sedimentary basins persisted.

Vegetation

• The vegetation was dominated by the forked seed-fern, Dicroidium with abundant horsetails, club-mosses, ginkgoes, ferns, conifers such as pines and araucarians.

Animals

• Aquatic environments were dominated by fish and labyrinthodont amphibians

What was happening in the rest of the world

• The first dinosaurs, prosauropods, early ornithopods, small predators like Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus appeared.
• The mammal-like reptiles were declining.
• The long-tailed pterosaurs rule the air.
• Sharks, bony fishes and ichthyosaurs inhabit the oceans
• Early crocodiles, lizards and turtles thrive; insects such as cockroaches and dragonflies flourish
• Primitive mammals were appearing.

Robert Jones , Palaeontology
Last Updated: 16 July 2009

Tags dinosaurs, snapshots through time, Triassic,