The Mesozoic Era is one of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon. The division of time into eras dates back to
Giovanni Arduino, in the 18th century, although
his original name for the era now called the 'Mesozoic' was 'Secondary' (making the modern era the 'Tertiary'). Lying between the Paleozoic and the Cenozoic, Mesozoic means 'middle animals', derived from Greek prefix
meso-/μεσο- for 'between' and zoon/ζωον meaning animal or 'living being'. It is often called the 'Age of the Dinosaurs', after the dominant fauna of the era.
The Mesozoic was a time of tectonic, climatic and
evolutionary activity. The continents gradually shifted from a state of connectedness into
their present configuration; the drifting provided for speciation and other important
evolutionary developments. The climate was exceptionally warm throughout the period, also playing an important role in the
evolution and diversification of new animal species. By the end of the era,
the basis of modern life was in place.
Geologic periods
Following the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic extended roughly 180 million years: from 251 million years ago (Mya) to when the Cenozoic era began 65 Mya. This time frame is separated into three geologic Periods. From oldest to youngest:
The lower (Triassic) boundary is set by the Permian-Triassic
extinction, during which approximately 90% to 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates became
extinct. It is also known as the "Great Dying" because it is considered the largest mass
extinction in history. The upper (Cretaceous) boundary is set at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction, which may have been caused by the meteor that
created the Chicxulub Crater on the Yucatán
Peninsula. Approximately 50% of all genera became extinct, including all of the non-avian
dinosaurs.
Tectonics
After the vigorous convergent plate mountain-building of the late Paleozoic, Mesozoic
tectonic deformation was comparatively mild. Nevertheless, the era featured the dramatic rifting of the supercontinent Pangaea. Pangaea gradually split into a northern
continent, Laurasia, and a southern continent, Gondwana. This
created the passive continental margin that characterizes most of the Atlantic coastline
(such as along the U.S. East Coast) today. [1]
By the end of the era, the continents had rifted into nearly their present form. Laurasia became North America and Eurasia, while Gondwana split into South America, Africa, Australia,
Antarctica and the Indian subcontinent, which collided
with the Asian plate during the Cenozoic, the impact giving rise to the Himalayas.
Climate
The Triassic was generally dry, a trend that began in the late Carboniferous, and
highly seasonal, especially in the interior of Pangaea. Low sea levels may have also exacerbated temperature extremes. With its
high specific heat capacity, water acts as a temperature-stabilizing heat, and land areas near large bodies of
water—especially the oceans—experience less variation in temperature. Because much of the land
that constituted Pangaea was distant from the oceans, temperatures fluctuated greatly, and the interior of Pangaea probably
included expansive areas of desert. Abundant evidence of red
beds and evaporites such as salt support these conclusions.
Sea levels began to rise during the Jurassic, which was probably caused by an increase in seafloor spreading. The formation of new crust beneath the surface displaced ocean waters by as much
as 200 m more than today, which flooded coastal areas. Furthermore, Pangaea began to rift into smaller divisions, bringing more
land area in contact with the ocean by forming the Tethys Sea. Temperatures continued to
increase and began to stabilize. Humidity also increased with the proximity of water, and
deserts retreated.
The climate of the Cretaceous is less certain and more widely disputed. Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused the world temperature gradient from north to south to become almost flat: temperatures were about the
same across the planet. Average temperatures were also higher than today by about 10°C. In fact,
by the middle Cretaceous, equatorial ocean waters (perhaps as warm as 20 °C in the deep ocean) may have been too warm for sea
life, and land areas near the equator may have been deserts despite their proximity to water. The circulation of oxygen to the deep ocean may also have been disrupted. For this reason, large volumes of organic matter
accumulated because they were unable to decompose and were eventually deposited as "black shale".
Not all of the data support these hypotheses, however. Even with the overall warmth, temperature fluctuations should have been
sufficient for the presence of polar ice caps and glaciers, but there is no evidence of either. Quantitative models have also been unable to recreate the flatness
of the Cretaceous temperature gradient.
Life
The extinction of nearly all animal species at the end of the Permian period allowed for the
radiation of many new lifeforms. In particular, the extinction of the large
herbivorous and carnivorous dinocephalia left those ecological niches empty. Some were filled
by the surviving cynodonts and dicynodonts, the latter of
which subsequently became extinct. Animal life during the Mesozoic was
dominated, however, by large archosaurian reptiles that
appeared a few million years after the Permian extinction: dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and aquatic reptiles such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs.
The climatic changes of the late Jurassic and Cretaceous provided for further adaptive radiation. The Jurassic was the height
of archosaur diversity, and the first birds and placental mammals
also appeared. Angiosperms radiated sometime in the early Cretaceous, first in the
tropics, but the even temperature gradient allowed them to spread toward the poles throughout
the period. By the end of the Cretaceous, angiosperms dominated tree floras in many areas, although some evidence suggests that
biomass was still dominated by cycad and ferns until after the KT extinction.
Some have argued that insects diversified with angiosperms because insect anatomy, especially the mouth parts, seems particularly well-suited for flowering
plants. However, all major insect mouth parts preceded angiosperms and insect diversification actually slowed when they arrived,
so their anatomy originally must have been suited for some other purpose.
As the temperatures in the seas increased, the larger animals of the early Mesozoic gradually began to disappear while smaller
animals of all kinds, including lizards, snakes, and perhaps the
ancestor mammals to primates, evolved. The KT extinction
exacerbated this trend. The large archosaurs became extinct, while birds and mammals thrived, as they do today.
References
- British Mesozoic Fossils, 1983, The Natural History Museum, London.
- ^ Stanley, Steven M. Earth System History. New York: W.H. Freeman and
Company, 1999. ISBN 0-7167-2882-6
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