How It Works-Book Of Dinosaurs

THE PREHISTORIC WORLD

Dinosaur habitats

Triassic forest

250 to 200 million years ago

The weather was milder at the north and south poles.

It was drier, so large forests grew

The presence of coal deposits in

the high northern and southern

latitudes suggests that these

regions were much wetter than the

desert-like lower latitudes, so dense,

forest-like vegetation was able to grow.

These jungles were home to

Rauisuchians, such as the Effi gia, and

Sauropodomorphs, such as the

Plateosaurus, whose long neck and

weight-bearing bone structure allowed it to

stand upright, which in turn enabled it to

feed off plants that were out of reach of

other herbivorous dinosaurs.

During the Triassic period, the oceans

and continents were starting to change.

The land mass of the supercontinent

Pangaea was at its largest due to lower sea

levels and it had started to move

northwards and rotate anticlockwise,

ultimately breaking up to give the Earth a

slightly more familiar look. Fossils from the

mid-to-late Triassic period indicate that the

seas and oceans housed a wide range of

marine-based reptiles and ammonites that

began to thrive in this period.

Even the north and south poles

were warm. They weren’t icy

and frozen like Antarctica and

the Arctic are today

No ice caps

Most trees in these forests

were tall with tough leaves.

They were evergreens so didn’t

lose their leaves over winter

Trees