Triassic Period Animals

It's very simple why kids are crazy about dinosaurs, dinosaurs are nature's Special Effects. They are the only real dragons. Kids love dragons. It's not just being weirdly shaped and being able to eat Buicks. It's that they are real.

, Robert T. Bakker

The Triassic Period was the first geological period of the Mesozoic Era, and it lasted from 250 million years ago till 200 million years ago. It was preceded by the Permian period, which was the last geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and was succeeded by the Jurassic Period. The Mesozoic Era was characterized by the emergence and development of the widest variety of dinosaurs on Earth among all prehistoric geological periods. This was also the era by the end of which the maximum number of prehistoric animal species became extinct from the face of our planet.

Triassic Period Climate

Studies by geologists and paleontologists have shown the average climatic conditions of the Triassic Period to have been on the hot and dry side. There are no signs that glaciers existed at either pole. Reddish-hued sedimentary rocks and water-soluble mineral evaporites covered the Earth's surface and crust. During this period, there was only one huge terrestrial mass, located along the median belt of the Earth, with the Equatorial latitude as its approximate center. The climate at the polar extremities of this supercontinent tended toward a somewhat moist and temperate environment.

This landmass has been named Pangaea, meaning all the land. It was so huge that it limited the climatically moderating effects of the global ocean, the single enormous mass of water surrounding it. As a result, the overall climate remained continental in nature, with extreme seasonal variations. The summer was intensely hot, while the winter was chilling. It is the temperate polar regions of this huge prehistoric landmass that encouraged the propagation and evolution of reptilian creatures and coniferous plants.

Animals and Plants of the Triassic

The Triassic flora, as suggested by fossils and other evidence, was composed mostly of plant species belonging to the lycophyta, cycadophyta, ginkophyta, and pteridospermatophyta divisions of the plant kingdom, with seed-producing plants being dominant. The Triassic Period fauna included a large number of species of life forms such as prehistoric amphibians, reptiles, insects, crustaceans, mollusks, mammals, fish, and synapsids. Most of our modern-day animals have descended from some of these creatures.

List of Animals that Lived at this Time

Check out the following list of some Triassic Age animals to get an insight into the vast diversity of the now-extinct animals that made up the Triassic fauna.

Amphibians

Triassic amphibians ranged from large flat-skulled predators to early frog-like creatures. Many were much bigger than any amphibian alive today.

Crustaceans

Fish

Insects

Mammals

Triassic mammals were tiny, nocturnal creatures, among the earliest ancestors of every mammal alive today, including humans. They were no bigger than a modern mouse.

Mollusks

Reptiles

Reptiles were the dominant group of the Triassic Period. They ranged from swimming predators like Nothosaurus to gliding creatures and the earliest true dinosaurs.

Synapsids

Synapsids were a group that bridged the gap between reptiles and mammals. Some, like Lystrosaurus, survived the mass extinction that ended the Permian Period and went on to thrive in the early Triassic.

Explore More Animals

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The Dinosaurs of the Triassic

Triassic Period animals include the likes of Agrosaurus, Isanosaurus, Plateosaurus, Melanosaurus, and Eoraptor, which are some of the major dinosaurs of this time. As many as 300 different types of dinosaurs and other animal life forms existed in this period, including mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and others. Most of these life forms are further classified into various different species, taking the count to somewhere around a couple of thousand. The lists above mostly enumerate the generic varieties of life forms under each class of animals.

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