Dinosaur Timeline
In the Mesozoic Era, Earth was a very different place. The world as we know it has
seven different continents – Asia, Antarctica, Europe, Africa, North America, South
America and Australia. However, when the dinosaurs first existed there was only one
super continent, called Pangea.
The Earth's crust is made up of different sections, called plates. These plates are
constantly moving and continents rest on these plates. This means that as the plates
move, the shape of the land is changed.
The Mesozoic Era had three periods – the
Triassic period, the Jurassic period and the
Cretaceous period.
s
During the Triassic period there wa
d
the one supercontinent, Pangaea, an
a giant ocean, Panthalassa.
The Jurassic period saw this supercontinent
begin to break up, forming two large
continents, Laurasia and Gondwana.
period
the Cretaceous period, the last
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What Happened to the Dinosaurs?
Sixty-five million years ago the dinosaurs died out – there was what
we call a 'mass extinction'. Scientists cannot be completely certain
what happened, however they think it was most likely that a huge
meteorite hit Earth, creating a dust cloud of fumes that shut out the
sunlight and changed the climate.
They also believe that there was a lot of volcanic activity at the
same time, with the clouds of ash and dust from the volcanoes also
blocking out the sunlight. These events led to the extinction of the
dinosaurs.
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