Which periods make up the mesozoic era

Mesozoic signposts are colored blue. The images show the art on the Trek Through Time signposts. The name of each period is a link to the entire plaque installed on the Trek Through Time. Artist's rendition of life in the Triassic. Note the plate movements also in the lower left of these images.

What animals were on Earth during the Triassic Period? What plants were on Earth during the Triassic Period? What animals were on Earth during the Jurassic Period? What plants were on Earth during the Jurassic Period? What was Virginia like during the Jurassic Period? Artist's rendition of life in the Cretaceous. This is the era we all think of when we imagine the Ancient Earth! Rampaging dinosaurs!

Dive-bombing pterodactyls! Endless forests of giant ferns! Erupting Volcanoes! Sorry, no cave men! They didn't show up until the end of the Cenozoic. The Mesozoic Era lasted about million years, from about million years ago to about 65 million years ago.

The Mesozoic is divided into just three time periods: the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous. Since lots of things were going on in each time period, we can only summarize the events. You can learn more by going to your library or searching the Internet for words like "Mesozoic" or the names of each of the periods.

In the view above, we see Earth in the middle of the Jurassic Period, in mid-Mesozoic times sort of a middle-middle view. The supercontinents Gondwanaland and Laurasia collided some time back to form a single super-super continent called Pangea "All-Earth".

But plate tectonics continues its irresistible motions, and even as we look, Pangea is beginning to break up into the continents we know now. This last point in time is the start of a division of geological time called the Phanerozoic Eon.

These were named for the kinds of fossils that were present. This is because the fossils are similar to animals and plants that are common today.

The Paleozoic era begins with the Cambrian radiation, a time of great growth in the number of different kinds of animals in the oceans. It ends with the greatest extinction in the history of life. Other major extinction events occurred at the end of the Ordovician Period and near the end of the Devonian Period.

The Paleozoic Era is also the time in which plants and animals adapted to life on land. The Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras make up the youngest half of the Phanerozoic.