Lucas Lenci

In the Triassic Period, plant life included huge ferns, evergreen trees, and trees that looked like today's tropical palm trees. The climate was normally hot and dry, affecting the plants dramatically. (Growth wise). Glossopterids are a group of tree ferns, and Gymnosperms are plants containing exposed seeds. The herbivores caused their own extinction by producing so much methane. All the plants needed fresh air, however, the methane polluted all the oxygen and the plants died. This effected the herbivores as there were no plants for them to eat.

In the late Triassic, there was an extinction of approximately 35% of animals, of which the majority was marine life. Still, no-one knows what caused it. The coccolithophores (an essential group of pelagic algae) made their first appearance in the oceans. The dinoflagellates went through rapid diversification during the late Triassic, and the early Jurassic.

In this period, no significant plant groups originated, but Jurassic plant communities were quite divergent from their ancestors. True ferns were alive during the Jurassic, but the gymnosperms ruled the world-wide environment. The first evidence for angiosperms wasn't discovered until the Cretaceous period. For this reason, they didn’t exist in the Jurassic period. The seed ferns including Glossopteris and Gondwana vanished at or near the Triassic- Jurassic chronological boundary. The cycads (including the modern sago palms) and also the extinct cycadeoids are actually palm – like gymnosperms.

The cycads expanded to such a large quantity that this period was well known as, “The Age of Cycads!” The ginkgo is a fruit-bearing gymnosperm that is represented nowadays by only one existing species, which was reasonably widespread during the Jurassic Period.

Jurassic Period (geochronology) :: Plants -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia Jurassic Period (geochronology) :: Plants -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia saurages_3.htm saurages_3.htm