What is the Mesozoic era?

Newsletter of the ICP

What is the Mesozoic era?

The Mesozoic era was formed by three geological periods (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous) that includes almost 200 years of evolution of life on Earth, from about 251 million years to about 65 million years ago.

In these periods, the dominant vertebrates were reptiles and, to a lesser extent, amphibians.

At that moment, the Earth was forming its present continental morphology by starting from a so-called super-continent 'Pangea' that began to fragment at the beginning of the Triassic.

Also during the Mesozoic a great revolution in the flora (the appearance of flowering plants at the beginning of the Cretaceous) took place with the resulting impact on continental ecosystems and the vertebrates that depended upon them.

The best known faunas of this period are dinosaurs. However, during the Mesozoic great events in the evolution of the vertebrates took place; the rapid decline of the dominion of amphibians before the reptiles at the beginning of the Triassic, the appearance and spreading of the first mammals, the conquest of the air and the sea by some reptiles, the diversification of dinosaurs and, finally their extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.

One of the great divulgative projects where the ICP's Mesozoic team has worked is the web Dinosaurios del Levante peninsular, where you'll find all the information about dinosaurs in the East Iberian Peninsula.