GEOL 305 Lecture 3: Mesozoic Climate & Plant Life (Day 3)
7 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
Pangaea formed during later part of paleozoic era. All during the paleozoic era, (from ~ 540 245 million years ago) the continental masses, because of tectonic plate movement, had been assembling into a mega- continent called pangaea. Big continents have most of their land area far from the ocean those interior areas experience severe weather / climate. Large scale eruptions of lava in siberia at that time poisoned the atmosphere. These & other factors caused the largest mass extinction of life the earth has ever known. Extinction even devastated large terrestrial animal fauna (mammal- like reptiles which had dominated the permian) Group that developed & evolved to fill all those empty lifestyle niches were the reptilian archosaurs. One group of archosaurs were the ancestors of. Because the continental masses were all basically connected together through the. Late triassic the flora & fauna of the world were very similar (even though large mountain ranges existed which could have acted as barriers).
