Talk:Mesozoic

19th century
The division of time into Eras dates to the 18th century. The 1800s are the 19th century. 'Triassic' is a term introduced in the 1830s. I made the change. Wetman 11:01, 27 November 2003 (UTC)

Age of dinosaurs?
Is age of dinosaurs appropriate? they didn't necessarily rule the earth at the time!--ShurTape 23:33, 25 March 2005 (UTC)

"Age of Reptiles"
There is a series of graphic novels called "Age of Reptiles", so shouldn't that article be here? Scorpionman 15:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a redirect could be included. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dinolover45 (talk • contribs) 16:08, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

copy vio
the climate section is from. I'll remove it. Matt 16:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Start/end times of periods
The many dinosaur books I read all give different dates for the beginning and starting points of the Mesozoic periods. The Triassic fluctuates from 248-213 to 235-195 million years ago and the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary shifts between 145 and 130 million years. What is the right timeline? Personally I think it's this:


 * Triassic- 245-200 mya
 * Jurassic- 200-135 mya
 * Cretaceous- 135-65 mya.

But what's really correct? Jerkov 20:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * According to the authority on the geologic time scale, the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the dates are as follows :
 * Triassic (251.0 - 199.6)
 * Jurassic (199.6 - 145.5)
 * Cretaceous (145.5 - 65.5)
 * That's not how the article has them. I'll change it. -- bcasterline • talk 03:25, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, thanks. I always thought the Triassic and Cretaceous started a bit later, but I guess we'll always be a few million years off because the dating methods aren't 100 % perfect. Jerkov 14:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yep; the dating of the start and end times of various geologic periods and epochs is very much a work in progress.Erimus 23:02, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Here's my opinion
 * Triassic (250-200 MYA)
 * Jurassic (200-145 MYA)
 * Cretaceous (145-65 MYA

I also think dinosaurs appeared about 230 million years ago until 65 million years ago and ruled for about 160 million years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.36.131.120 (talk) 14:47, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Contradiction with "Cenozoic" article
This article reads (in intro), "The continents gradually shifted from a state of connectedness into their present configuration." But the Cenozoic article reads, "the Cenozoic is the era when continents moved into their current positions."

which is correct? they can't both.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by NCartmell (talk • contribs) 00:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Interwiki
The first interwiki link (there are two because of a mistake) to the Romanian article isn´t correct, it links to a different type of article on the Romanian Wikipedia. In fact it´s easy to tell, it´s not between Portuguese and Russian, as it normally is. The wrong one is just under "Brezhoneg", the first interwiki link.--Venatoreng 20:42, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Mesozoic real facts
The Mesozoic Era lasted more than 180 million years. During this time, many modern forms of plants, invertebrates, and fishes evolved. On land, dinosaurs were the dominant animals, while the oceans were populated by large marine reptiles, and Pterosaurs ruled the air. For most of this period, the climate worldwide was warm and tropical, and shallow seas covered low-lying landmasses. At the beginning of the Mesozoic, all of the world's continents were joined into the supercontinent of Pangea,The Mesozoic Era is divided into three periods, each lasting many millions of years: the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. The Triassic saw the emergence of many modern invertebrate groups, and on land thereptiles replaced the mammals.In the oceans fishbecame as large as whales. The Jurassic was the height of the dinosaur era, with giants such as Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus, etc, and mammals tiny and shrew-like. Distinctive plants like ferns, Cycads, Bennettitales, and Cheirolepidiaceae conifers characterized the landscape. During the Cretaceous period, the first flowering plants appeared, birds and fish diversified, and new types of dinosaurs appeared. The climate cooled and unique dinosaurs evolved on different continents. The climate during the Mesozoic is warm; so warm that there are no ice caps at all, even at the poles! Plants grow like crazy in the warmth and moisture, so there is food everywhere for your average hungry 50-ton Ultrasaurus! So what happened to this Dino Paradise? More change! A mass extinction like those in the Paleozoic ended the idyllic Mesozoic Era (if you can call dodging your friendly local T-Rex as idyllic). More than half of all existing life forms disappeared, including virtually all of the dinosaurs. Why? There are many hypotheses, including disease, volcanic eruptions, and giant impacts. 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. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Somoman (talk • contribs) 01:58, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

That's pretty much the exact info given in the article, so why are you proposing an entry that already exists? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dinolover45 (talk • contribs) 16:12, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Africa?
Umm, why the heck is there an "Africa" heading, but no other continents listed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.127.53.168 (talk) 18:01, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

It's all Greek to me
There appears to be a contradiction between the Mesozoic Era page and the Cenozoic and Paleozoic pages. All three define the etymology of the era, but the Mesozoic page is different from the other two. Basically, here's the problem... Which of these is not like the others? They all have the same root suffix of -zoic, but it means two different things in three different articles. A casual google search shows that Mesozoic could mean either "Middle Animals" or "Middle Life," but since I'm not an expert in the Greek language (see topic title), I don't know which it's supposed to be. In any case, all three articles should adopt the same meaning. Kni7es (talk) 16:02, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Cenozoic = Greek for "New Life"
 * Mesozoic = Greek for "Middle Animals"
 * Paleozoic = Greek for "Ancient Life"
 * It translates into both, it just depends on the interpretation. Dunkleosteus77   (push to talk)  01:25, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Did dinosaurs really "rule" the earth?
I have heard the terms "rule", "ruled", or "ruling" in many dinosaur-related articles. "Rule" is somewhat of an unscientific term in this sense. Use of the word makes it sound like dinosaurs owned the earth, which is an impossibility. Not even humans can own the earth, let alone dinosaurs. A more scientific term would be that they were among the most abundant and long-lived classes of vertebrates alive at the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dinolover45 (talk • contribs) 16:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

They were the dominant terrestrial animal at the time, so in a sense, they did "rule" the world Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 17:33, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

this is a good point that probably warrants clearing up. This is sort've an expression and its probably used in many of the sources, but if its possible it should be clarified as to what "ruled" is referring to. Is it a reference to the "food chain?" If so it seems imprecise to say that Dinosaurs ruled the food chain considering the diversity of that category of creatures its unlikely that they were ALL simultaneously at the top of the food chain. OR perhaps is it additionally a reference to their proliferation on the planet, but again such a diverse crowd of beings and were they really more prolific than say..insects at the time? I don't profess to the know these answers but these questions make it seem to me the expression if it should be in the article it should be clarified..that is if any sources of the expression in the article have done so.SoNetMedia&#39;s Alfred O. Mega (talk) 16:37, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Plant diversity
The section on plants needs a lot of work, and in particularly should rely on relevant, preferably recent references (a lot of what we know about angiosperm evolution is quite recent knowledge). I'm hoping someone would have time to expand on it, unfortunately I do not. I don't know if gymnosperms were dominant, still, towards the end of Cretaceous. Flowering plants have certainly been there for most of the Mesozoic, possibly from late Triassic, and probably most orders (I don't have a reliable estimate) and even many of the flowering plant genera we have now had emerged by late Cretaceous. Therefore, most of the evolutionary history of angiosperms is from the Mesozoic, and their importance in the era is very much downplayed in this article. Of course, the overwhelming dominance of flowering plants we now observe is mostly a character of world after the K-T boundary, and some key families such as Poaceae and Leguminosae may have emerged post-KT, but I would not believe that the situation of (taxononic or numeric) dominance of gymnosperms was so clear-cut unless good references can be provided. 137.132.3.8 (talk) 05:42, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Climate
I don't think a citation is needed to explain why large bodies of water moderate climate. If it wasn't self evident enough, the section goes on to explain it better.

Citation NOT Needed I think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.99.128.243 (talk) 14:22, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Improvements needed in Geologic periods section
The 'Geologic periods' section of this article is somewhat strangely written, departing from the more scientific approach that is common to these articles (and to other sections of this one.) Also, there are some scientific inaccuracies (for example, archosaurs did not go extinct in the Triassic - dinosaurs are archosaurs, and they were very much still around for the Jurassic.)

Examples:

> The Early Triassic lived between

> thus the interior was nothing but arid.

> the reptiles began to get bigger and bigger.

> that had since ruled the freshwater world.

> in which all archosaurs (excluding ancient crocodiles), synapsids, and almost all large amphibians went extinct

Perhaps something of a rewrite might be in order? Roarian2 (talk) 10:52, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Request for a small fix on the period box
Greetings and felicitations. Would someone please be so kind as to change the spaced hyphen in "251.902 - 66 million years ago" to an unspaced en dash (i.e., "251.902–66 million years ago"), as per MOS:ENDASH/MOS:DATERANGE. I would, but I can't find where the text is being transcluded from. [Previously unsigned comment added by ——DocWatson42 (talk) 06:07, 6 November 2018 (UTC)]

Infobox image
I noticed my edit to add an image to the infobox was rolled back, with the reason "I don't see how 190 million years can be summed up with artwork". After giving Adding images improves the encyclopedia a read-through, I'm inspired to open a discussion about this.

I hope we can find an image that works well. I believe File:Ciechocinek Formation Reconstruction.jpg is decently characteristic of the timespan: It depicts some dominant life, and the sight would certainly be unique to the Mesozoic. I agree it may not summarize 190 million years, but I do think it could provide a good launch point for the article.

How could the choice be improved? What, generally, should a geologic timespan's lead image depict? ——JavaRogers (talk) 00:14, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Egregious errors
There are numerous egregious errors in this article. In just a few minutes, I noticed claims such as Temnospondyls evolved during [the Early Triassic] and would be the dominant predator for much of the Triassic (temnospondyls evolved during the Carboniferous, and are hardly the only claimant to the title of "dominant predator"), During [the Middle Jurassic], dinosaurs flourished as huge herds of sauropods, such as Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus, filled the fern prairies, chased by many new predators such as Allosaurus. [...] This epoch was the peak of the reptiles (all of those are Late Jurassic genera, and "the peak of the reptiles" is a vague claim), and The Early Cretaceous saw the expansion of seaways, and as a result, the decline and/or extinction of Laurasian sauropods. Some island-hopping dinosaurs, like Eustreptospondylus, evolved to cope with the coastal shallows and small islands of ancient Europe. Other dinosaurs rose up to fill the empty space that the Jurassic-Cretaceous extinction left behind, such as Carcharodontosaurus and Spinosaurus (none of those are Early Cretaceous genera, sauropods didn't go extinct in Laurasia, the notion of a J-K extinction is now considered unlikely last I heard...). This article needs a careful review and significant rewrites. Ornithopsis (talk) 03:18, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Each of those statements should be flagged or removed if unsourced or flagged with a "failed verification" flag if the source does not support the statement. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 22:49, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

"Secondary Period" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Secondary_Period&redirect=no Secondary Period] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at until a consensus is reached. An anonymous username, not my real name 03:05, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

'Paleogeography and Tectonics' Contradictions and Gaps
The paleogeography section says "the sole major Mesozoic orogeny occurred in the Arctic", and lists several mountain ranges resulting. However, the article for the Chersky Range suggests that this is a suture zone and mentions nothing of an Arctic orogeny. Further, the section does not mention the Nevadan Orogeny, perhaps not considering it to be a "major" event. Also not considered are the Sevier Orogeny (that page states that it had begun no later than the Jurassic), and the Laramide (that pages states it had begun 80 mya, in the Cretaceous). The page for the Andean Orogeny states that that event began in the Jurassic as well. None of the orogenies listed in Category:Mesozoic orogenies are listed. The noted "Arctic orogeny" has been citation needed since July 2022. 2600:4040:9E87:2300:C44B:A416:7CEC:51AC (talk) 18:14, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

"Dodicurus era" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dodicurus_era&redirect=no Dodicurus era] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Tollens (talk) 23:29, 1 December 2023 (UTC)