Encyclopedic short information about the Jurassic period. Jurassic system (period) Who lived in the Jurassic period

Jurassic period (Jurassic)- the middle (second) period of the Mesozoic era. It began 201.3 ± 0.2 Ma ago and ended 145.0 Ma ago. It continued in this way for about 56 million years. The complex of deposits (rocks) corresponding to a given age is called the Jurassic system. In different regions of the planet, these deposits differ in composition, genesis, and appearance.

For the first time deposits of this period were described in the Jura (mountains in Switzerland and France); hence the name of the period. The deposits of that time are quite diverse: limestones, clastic rocks, shales, igneous rocks, clays, sands, conglomerates, formed in a variety of conditions.

Flora

In the Jurassic, vast territories were covered with lush vegetation, primarily with various forests. They mainly consisted of ferns and gymnosperms.

Cycads - a class of gymnosperms that prevailed in the green cover of the Earth. Now they are found in the tropics and subtropics. Dinosaurs roamed under the shade of these trees. Outwardly, cycads are so similar to low (up to 10-18 m) palm trees that even Carl Linnaeus placed them in his system of plants among palm trees.

In the Jurassic period, groves of gingko trees grew throughout the then temperate zone. Ginkgoes are deciduous (unusually for gymnosperms) trees with an oak-like crown and small, fan-shaped leaves. Only one species has survived to this day - ginkgo biloba.

Very diverse were conifers, similar to modern pines and cypresses, which flourished at that time not only in the tropics, but had already mastered the temperate zone. The ferns gradually disappeared.

Fauna

marine organisms

Compared with the Triassic, the population of the seabed has changed a lot. Bivalves displace brachiopods from shallow waters. Brachiopod shells are replaced by oysters. Bivalve molluscs fill all the vital niches of the seabed. Many stop collecting food from the ground and move on to pumping water with the help of gills. A new type of reef communities is emerging, approximately the same as it exists now. It is based on six-ray corals that appeared in the Triassic.

Land animals of the Jurassic period

One of the fossil creatures that combine the features of birds and reptiles is Archeopteryx, or the first bird. For the first time, his skeleton was discovered in the so-called lithographic slates in Germany. The discovery was made two years after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species and became a strong argument in favor of the theory of evolution. Archeopteryx flew quite badly (planned from tree to tree), and was about the size of a crow. Instead of a beak, it had a pair of toothy, albeit weak jaws. It had free fingers on its wings (of modern birds, they were preserved only in hoatzin chicks).

In the Jurassic period, small, woolly warm-blooded animals - mammals - live on Earth. They live next to dinosaurs and are almost invisible against their background. In the Jura there was a division of mammals into monotremes, marsupials and placentals.

Dinosaurs (English Dinosauria, from other Greek δεινός - terrible, terrible, dangerous and σαύρα - lizard, lizard) lived in forests, lakes, swamps. The range of differences between them is so great that family ties between them are established with great difficulty. There were dinosaurs ranging in size from a cat to a whale. Different types of dinosaurs could move on two or four limbs. Among them were both predators and herbivores.

Scale

Geological scale
Aeon Era Period
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Cenozoic Quaternary
Neogene
Paleogene
Mesozoic Chalk
Yura
Triassic
Paleozoic Permian
Carbon
Devonian
Silurus
Ordovician
Cambrian
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Neo-
Proterozoic
Ediacaran
cryogeny
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Meso-
Proterozoic
Stenius
Ectasia
potassium
Paleo-
Proterozoic
Statery
Orosirium
Riasius
siderius
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neoarchean
Mesoarchean
paleoarchaean
Eoarchean
catarchean

Jurassic subdivision

The Jurassic system is subdivided into 3 divisions and 11 tiers:

system the Department tier Age, million years ago
Chalk Lower Berriasian smaller
Jurassic period Upper
(malm)
titonian 145,0-152,1
Kimmeridge 152,1-157,3
Oxford 157,3-163,5
Medium
(dogger)
Callovian 163,5-166,1
Bath 166,1-168,3
Bayosian 168,3-170,3
Aalen 170,3-174,1
Lower
(lias)
Toarian 174,1-182,7
Plinsbachsky 182,7-190,8
Sinemursky 190,8-199,3
Goettansky 199,3-201,3
Triassic Upper Rhetic more
Subsections are given in accordance with IUGS as of January 2013

Rostras of belemnites Acrofeuthis sp. Early Cretaceous, Hauterivian

Brachiopod shells Kabanoviella sp. Early Cretaceous, Hauterivian

Bivalve shell Inoceramus aucella Trautschold, Early Cretaceous, Hauterivian

Skeleton of a saltwater crocodile Stenosaurus, Steneosaurus boltensis Jaeger. Early Jurassic, Germany, Holzmaden. Among the saltwater crocodiles, the talattosuchian stenosaurus was the least specialized form. He had developed not flippers, but ordinary five-fingered limbs, like in land animals, although somewhat shortened. In addition, a powerful bone shell made of plates has been preserved on the back and belly.

Three of the specimens displayed on the wall (crocodile stenosaurus and two ichthyosaurs - stenopterygium and eurhinosaurus) were found at one of the world's largest localities of the Early Jurassic marine fauna HOLTSMADEN (about 200 million years ago; Bavaria, Germany). For several centuries, the development of shale was carried out here, which was used as a building and decorative material.

At the same time, a huge number of remains of invertebrate fish, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and crocodiles were discovered. More than 300 ichthyosaur skeletons alone have been recovered.


Small flying lizards - sordes were numerous in the vicinity of Lake Karatau. They probably fed on fish and insects. On some specimens of sordes, remnants of the hairline have been preserved, which is extremely rare in other localities.

Thecodonts- prenova group for other archosaurs. The first representatives (1,2) were terrestrial predators with widely spaced limbs. In the process of evolution, some thecodonts acquired a semi-vertical and vertical position of their paws with a quadrupedal mode of locomotion (3,5,6), others - in parallel with the development of bipedality (2,7,8). Most thecodonts were terrestrial, but some of them were amphibious (6).

crocodiles close to thecodonts. Early crocodiles (1,2,9) were terrestrial animals, marine forms with flippers and a tail fin also existed in the Mesozoic (10), and modern crocodiles are adapted to an amphibious lifestyle (11).

Dinosaurs- the central and most striking group of archosaurs. Large predatory carnosaurs (14,15) and small predatory cepurosaurs (16,17,18), as well as herbivorous ornithopods (19,20,21,22) were bipedal. Others used quadrupedal locomotion: sauropods (12,13), ceratopsians (23), stegosaurs (24) and antiposaurs (25). Sauropods and duck-billed dinosaurs (21) have, to varying degrees, adopted an amphibious way of life. One of the most highly organized among the archosaurs were flying pangolins (26,27,28), which had wings with a flying membrane, hair, and, possibly, a constant body temperature.

Birds- are considered direct descendants of the Mesozoic archosaurs.

Small land crocodiles, united in the Notosuchia group, were widespread in Africa and South America during the Cretaceous period.

Part of the skull of a sea lizard - pliosaurus. Pliosaurus cf. grandis Owen, Late Jurassic, Volga region. Pliosaurs, as well as their closest relatives - plesiosaurs, were perfectly adapted to the aquatic environment. They were distinguished by a large head, a short neck and long, powerful flipper-like limbs. Most of the pliosaurs had dagger-like teeth, and they were the most dangerous predators of the seas of the Jurassic period. This sample, 70 cm long, is only the front third of the pliosaurus skull, and the total length of the animal was 11-13 m. The pliosaurus lived 150-147 million years ago.

Larva of the Coptoclava beetle, Coptoclava longipoda Ping. This is one of the most dangerous predators in the lake.

Apparently, in the middle of the Cretaceous, the conditions in the lakes changed dramatically and many invertebrates had to go to rivers, streams, or temporary reservoirs (caddis flies, whose larvae build tube houses from grains of sand; Bottom sediments of these reservoirs are not preserved, flowing waters wash them away, destroying the remains of animals and plants. Organisms that migrated to such habitats disappear from the fossil record.

Houses of grains of sand, which were built and carried by caddisfly larvae, are very characteristic of the Early Cretaceous lakes. In later eras, such houses are found mainly in flowing waters.

Larvae of the caddisfly Terrindusia (reconstruction)



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And Switzerland. The beginning of the Jurassic period is determined by the radiometric method at 185 ± 5 Ma, the end at 132 ± 5 Ma; the total duration of the period is about 53 million years (according to 1975 data).

The Jurassic system in its modern volume was identified in 1822 by the German scientist A. Humboldt under the name "Jurassic formation" in the mountains of the Jura (Switzerland), the Swabian and Franconian Alb (). Jurassic deposits on the territory were first established by the German geologist L. Buch (1840). The first scheme of their stratigraphy and division was developed by the Russian geologist K.F. Rul'e (1845-49) in the Moscow region.

Subdivisions. All the main subdivisions of the Jurassic system, which were subsequently included in the common stratigraphic scale, are identified in the territory of Central Europe and Great Britain. The division of the Jurassic system into divisions was proposed by L. Buch (1836). The foundations of the stage division of the Jura were laid by the French geologist A. d "Orbigny (1850-52). The German geologist A. Oppel was the first to produce (1856-58) a detailed (zonal) subdivision of the Jurassic deposits. See table.

Most foreign geologists attribute the Callovian stage to the middle section, motivating this by the priority of the three-term division of the Jurassic (black, brown, white) by L. Bukh (1839). The Tithonian stage is distinguished in the sediments of the Mediterranean biogeographic province (Oppel, 1865); for the northern (boreal) province, its equivalent is the Volgian Stage, first identified in the Volga region (Nikitin, 1881).

general characteristics. Jurassic deposits are widespread on the territory of all continents and are present in the periphery, parts of ocean basins, forming the base of their sedimentary layer. By the beginning of the Jurassic period, two large continental masses are separated in the structure of the earth's crust: Laurasia, which included platforms and Paleozoic folded regions of North America and Eurasia, and Gondwana, which united the platforms of the Southern Hemisphere. They were separated by the Mediterranean geosynclinal belt, which was the Tethys oceanic basin. The opposite hemisphere of the Earth was occupied by the Pacific Ocean depression, along the edges of which the geosynclinal regions of the Pacific geosynclinal belt developed.

In the Tethys oceanic basin, during the entire Jurassic period, deep-sea siliceous, clayey, and carbonate deposits accumulated, accompanied in places by manifestations of underwater tholeiite-basalt volcanism. The wide southern passive margin of the Tethys was an area of ​​accumulation of shallow water carbonate deposits. On the northern margin, which in different places and at different times had both an active and a passive character, the composition of the deposits is more varied: sandy-argillaceous, carbonate, flysch in places, sometimes with manifestations of calc-alkaline volcanism. The geosynclinal regions of the Pacific belt developed in the regime of active margins. They are dominated by sandy-argillaceous deposits, a lot of siliceous ones, and volcanic activity was very actively manifested. The main part of Laurasia in the Early and Middle Jurassic was land. In the Early Jurassic, marine transgressions from geosynclinal belts captured only the territories of Western Europe, the northern part of Western Siberia, the eastern margin of the Siberian Platform, and in the Middle Jurassic, the southern part of the East European. At the beginning of the Late Jurassic, the transgression reached its maximum, spreading to the western part of the North American platform, the East European platform, the entire Western Siberia, Ciscaucasia and Transcaspia. Gondwana remained dry land throughout the Jurassic. Marine transgressions from the southern margin of the Tethys captured only the northeastern part of the African and the northwestern part of the Hindustan platforms. The seas within Laurasia and Gondwana were vast, but shallow-water epicontinental basins, where thin sandy-argillaceous deposits accumulated, and in the Late Jurassic, in areas adjacent to the Tethys, carbonate and lagoonal (gypsum- and salt-bearing) deposits accumulated. In the rest of the territory, Jurassic deposits are either absent or represented by continental sandy-clayey, often coal-bearing strata that fill individual depressions. The Pacific Ocean in the Jurassic was a typical oceanic basin, where thin carbonate-siliceous sediments and covers of tholeiitic basalts accumulated in the western part of the basin. At the end of the Middle - the beginning of the Late Jurassic, the formation of "young" oceans begins; there is an opening of the Central Atlantic, the Somali and North Australian basins of the Indian Ocean, the Amerasian basin of the Arctic Ocean, thereby beginning the process of dismemberment of Laurasia and Gondwana and the separation of modern continents and platforms.

The end of the Jurassic is the time of manifestation of the late Cimmerian phase of Mesozoic folding in geosynclinal belts. In the Mediterranean belt, folding movements manifested themselves in some places at the beginning of the Bajocian, in the pre-Callovian time (Crimea, Caucasus), at the end of the Jurassic (Alps, etc.). But they reached a special scope in the Pacific belt: in the Cordillera of North America (Nevadian folding), and the Verkhoyansk-Chukotka region (Verkhoyansk folding), where they were accompanied by the introduction of large granitoid intrusions, and completed the geosynclinal development of the regions.

The organic world of the Earth in the Jurassic period had a typical Mesozoic appearance. Among marine invertebrates, cephalopods (ammonites, belemnites) flourish, bivalves and gastropods, six-rayed corals, and "irregular" sea urchins are widespread. Among the vertebrates in the Jurassic period, reptiles (lizards) sharply predominate, which reach gigantic sizes (up to 25-30 m) and a great variety. Terrestrial herbivores and carnivores (dinosaurs), sea swimmers (ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs), flying pangolins (pterosaurs) are known. Fish are widespread in water basins, and the first (toothy) birds appear in the air in the Late Jurassic. Mammals, represented by small, still primitive forms, are not very common. The vegetation cover of the land of the Jurassic period is characterized by the maximum development of gymnosperms (cycads, bennetites, ginkgoes, conifers), as well as ferns.

The Jurassic period is the middle of the Mesozoic era. This piece of history is primarily famous for its dinosaurs, it was a very good time for all living things. During the Jurassic period, for the first time, reptiles ruled everywhere: in water, on land and in the air.
This period was named after a mountain range in Europe. The Jurassic period began about 208 million years ago. This period was more revolutionary than the Triassic. This revolutionism was with those estates that occurred with the earth's crust, because it was during the Jurassic period that the mainland of Pangea began to diverge. The climate has since become warmer and more humid. In addition, the level of water in the world's oceans began to rise. All this gave great opportunities for animals. Due to the fact that the climate became more favorable, plants began to appear on land. And corals began to appear in shallow waters.

The Jurassic period lasted from 213 to 144 million years ago. At the very beginning of the Jurassic period, the climate throughout the Earth was dry and warm. All around were deserts. But later heavy rains began to soak them with moisture. And the world became greener, lush vegetation began to flourish.
Ferns, conifers, and cycads formed extensive marshy forests. Araucaria, arborvitae, cicadas grew on the coast. Ferns and horsetails formed vast forest areas. At the beginning of the Jurassic period, about 195 million years ago. throughout the northern hemisphere, the vegetation was rather monotonous. But already starting from the middle of the Jurassic period, about 170-165 million years ago, two (conditional) plant belts were formed: northern and southern. Ginkgo and herbaceous ferns predominated in the northern vegetation belt. In the Jurassic period, Ginkgoaceae were very widespread. Groves of ginkgo trees grew throughout the belt.

In the southern vegetation belt, cycads and tree ferns predominated.
Ferns of the Jurassic period have survived in some parts of the wild to this day. Horsetails and club mosses almost did not differ from modern ones. The Jurassic period ferns and cordaites are now occupied by tropical forests, consisting mainly of cycads. Cycads are a class of gymnosperms that dominated the green cover of the Jurassic Earth. Now they are found here and there in the tropics and subtropics. Dinosaurs roamed under the canopy of these trees. Outwardly, cycads are so similar to low (up to 10-18 m) palm trees that they were even initially identified as palm trees in the plant system.

In the Jurassic, ginkgo trees are also common - deciduous (which is unusual for gymnosperms) trees with an oak-like crown and small fan-shaped leaves. Only one species has survived to this day - ginkgo biloba. The first cypress and, possibly, spruce trees appear during the Jurassic period. The coniferous forests of the Jurassic period were similar to modern ones.

During the Jurassic period, a temperate climate was established on Earth. Even the arid zones were rich in vegetation. Such conditions were ideal for the reproduction of dinosaurs. Among them, lizards and ornithischians are distinguished.

Lizards moved on four legs, had five toes on their feet, and ate plants. Most of them had a long neck, a small head and a long tail. They had two brains: one small, in the head; the second is much larger in size - at the base of the tail.
The largest of the Jurassic dinosaurs was the brachiosaurus, reaching a length of 26 m, weighing about 50 tons. It had columnar legs, a small head, and a thick long neck. Brachiosaurs lived on the shores of the Jurassic lakes, fed on aquatic vegetation. Every day, the brachiosaurus needed at least half a ton of green mass.
Diplodocus is the oldest reptile, its length was 28 m. It had a long thin neck and a long thick tail. Like a brachiosaurus, diplodocus moved on four legs, the hind legs were longer than the front ones. Diplodocus spent most of its life in swamps and lakes, where it grazed and escaped from predators.

Brontosaurus was comparatively tall, had a large hump on its back and a thick tail. Chisel-shaped small teeth were densely located on the jaws of a small head. The brontosaurus lived in swamps, on the shores of lakes. Brontosaurus weighed about 30 tons and exceeded 20 in length. Lizard-footed dinosaurs (sauropods) were the largest land animals known so far. All of them were herbivores. Until recently, paleontologists believed that such heavy creatures were forced to spend most of their lives in the water. It was believed that on land, his tibia would "break" under the weight of a colossal carcass. However, the finds of recent years (in particular, footprints) indicate that sauropods preferred to roam in shallow water, and they also entered solid ground. In relation to body size, brontosaurs had an extremely small brain, weighing no more than a pound. In the region of the sacral vertebrae of the brontosaurus, there was an expansion of the spinal cord. Being much larger than the brain, it controlled the musculature of the hind limbs and tail.

Ornithischian dinosaurs are divided into bipedal and quadrupedal. Different in size and appearance, they fed mainly on vegetation, but predators also appear among them.

Stegosaurs are herbivores. Stegosaurus is especially abundant in North America, from where several species of these animals are known, reaching a length of 6 m. The back was steeply convex, the height of the animal reached 2.5 m. The body was massive, although the stegosaurus moved on four legs, its forelimbs were much shorter rear. On the back, large bone plates rose in two rows, protecting the spinal column. At the end of the short, thick tail, used by the animal for defense, there were two pairs of sharp spikes. Stegosaurus was a vegetarian and had an exceptionally small head and a correspondingly tiny brain, little more than a walnut. Interestingly, the expansion of the spinal cord in the sacral region, associated with the innervation of powerful hind limbs, was much larger in diameter than the brain.
Many scaly lepidosaurs appear - small predators with beak-shaped jaws.

In the Jurassic period, flying lizards first appear. They flew with the help of a leathery shell stretched between the long finger of the hand and the bones of the forearm. Flying lizards were well adapted to flight. They had light tubular bones. The extremely elongated outer fifth finger of the forelimbs consisted of four joints. The first finger looked like a small bone or was completely absent. The second, third and fourth fingers consisted of two, rarely three bones and had claws. The hind limbs were quite strongly developed. They had sharp claws at their ends. The skull of flying lizards was relatively large, as a rule, elongated and pointed. In old lizards, the cranial bones fused and the skulls became similar to the skulls of birds. The premaxilla sometimes grew into an elongated toothless beak. Toothed lizards had simple teeth and sat in recesses. The largest teeth were in front. Sometimes they stick out to the side. This helped the lizards to catch and hold prey. The spine of animals consisted of 8 cervical, 10-15 dorsal, 4-10 sacral and 10-40 caudal vertebrae. The chest was wide and had a high keel. The shoulder blades were long, the pelvic bones were fused. The most characteristic representatives of flying lizards are pterodactyl and rhamphorhynchus.

Pterodactyls in most cases were tailless, different in size - from the size of a sparrow to a crow. They had wide wings and a narrow skull extended forward with a small number of teeth in the front. Pterodactyls lived in large flocks on the shores of the lagoons of the late Jurassic sea. During the day they hunted, and at nightfall they hid in trees or in rocks. The skin of pterodactyls was wrinkled and bare. They ate mainly fish, sometimes sea lilies, mollusks, and insects. In order to take off, pterodactyls had to jump off rocks or trees.
Rhamphorhynchus had long tails, long narrow wings, a large skull with numerous teeth. Long teeth of various sizes arched forward. The lizard's tail ended in a blade that served as a rudder. Ramphorhynchus could take off from the ground. They settled on the banks of rivers, lakes and seas, fed on insects and fish.

Flying lizards lived only in the Mesozoic era, and their heyday falls on the late Jurassic period. Their ancestors were apparently extinct ancient reptiles pseudosuchia. The long-tailed forms appeared before the short-tailed ones. At the end of the Jurassic, they became extinct.
It should be noted that flying lizards were not the ancestors of birds and bats. Flying lizards, birds and bats originated and developed in their own ways, and there are no close family ties between them. The only thing they have in common is the ability to fly. And although they all acquired this ability due to a change in the forelimbs, the differences in the structure of their wings convince us that they had completely different ancestors.

The seas of the Jurassic period were inhabited by dolphin-like reptiles - ichthyosaurs. They had a long head, sharp teeth, large eyes surrounded by a bone ring. The length of the skull of some of them was 3 m, and the body length was 12 m. The limbs of ichthyosaurs consisted of bone plates. Elbow, metatarsus, hand and fingers did not differ much in shape from each other. About a hundred bone plates supported a wide flipper. Shoulder and pelvic girdle were poorly developed. There were several fins on the body. Ichthyosaurs were viviparous animals.

Along with ichthyosaurs lived plesiosaurs. Appeared in the Middle Triassic, they reached their peak already in the Lower Jurassic, in the Cretaceous they were common in all seas. They were divided into two main groups: long-necked with a small head (plesiosaurs proper) and short-necked with a fairly massive head (pliosaurs). The limbs turned into powerful flippers, which became the main organ of swimming. The more primitive Jurassic pliosaurs originate mainly from Europe. Plesiosaurus from the Lower Jura, reached a length of 3 m. These animals often came ashore to rest. Plesiosaurs were not as dexterous in water as pliosaurs. To a certain extent, this shortcoming was compensated by the development of a long and very flexible neck, with the help of which plesiosaurs could seize prey with lightning speed. They ate mainly fish and shellfish.
In the Jurassic period, new genera of fossil turtles appear, and at the end of the period, modern turtles.
Tailless frog-like amphibians lived in fresh water.

There were a lot of fish in the Jurassic seas: bony, rays, sharks, cartilaginous, ganoid. They had an internal skeleton made of flexible cartilaginous tissue impregnated with calcium salts: a dense bony scaly cover that protected them well from enemies, and jaws with strong teeth.
Of the invertebrates in the Jurassic seas, ammonites, belemnites, sea lilies were found. However, in the Jurassic period, there were much fewer ammonites than in the Triassic. The Jurassic ammonites also differ from the Triassic in their structure, with the exception of the phyloceras, which did not change at all during the transition from the Triassic to the Jura. Separate groups of ammonites have preserved mother-of-pearl to our time. Some animals lived in the open sea, others inhabited bays and shallow inland seas.

Cephalopods - belemnites - swam in whole flocks in the Jurassic seas. Along with small specimens, there were real giants - up to 3 m long.
The remains of internal shells of belemnites, known as "devil's fingers", are found in the sediments of the Jurassic period.
In the seas of the Jurassic period, bivalve mollusks, especially those belonging to the oyster family, also developed significantly. They start to form oyster jars. Significant changes are undergoing sea urchins that settled on reefs. Along with the round forms that have survived to this day, there lived bilaterally symmetrical, irregularly shaped hedgehogs. Their body was stretched in one direction. Some of them had a jaw apparatus.

The Jurassic seas were relatively shallow. The rivers brought muddy water into them, delaying gas exchange. Deep bays were filled with decaying remains and silt containing a large amount of hydrogen sulfide. That is why in such places the remains of animals, carried by sea currents or waves, are well preserved.
Many crustaceans appear: barnacles, decapods, leaf-legged crayfish, freshwater sponges, among insects - dragonflies, beetles, cicadas, bedbugs.

Deposits of coal, gypsum, oil, salt, nickel and cobalt are associated with the Jurassic deposits.



Era. Continued for 56 million years. It began 201 million years ago and ended 145 million years ago. The geochronological scale of the history of the Earth of all eons, eras and periods is located.

The name "Jura" was named after the mountain range of the same name in Switzerland and France, where deposits of this period were first discovered. Later, geological formations of the Jurassic period were discovered in many other places on the planet.

In the Jurassic period, the Earth almost completely recovered from the largest in history. Various forms of life - marine organisms, land plants, insects and many animal species - begin to flourish and increase their species diversity. Dinosaurs reign in the Jurassic period - large, and sometimes just giant lizards. Dinosaurs existed almost everywhere and everywhere - in the seas, rivers and lakes, in swamps, forests, in open spaces. Dinosaurs received such a wide variety and distribution that over millions of years of evolution, some of them began to differ radically from each other. Dinosaurs included both herbivores and carnivores. Some of them were the size of a dog, while others reached a height of more than ten meters.

One of the species of lizards in the Jurassic period became the ancestor of birds. Archeopteryx, which existed just at this time, is considered an intermediate link between reptiles and birds. In addition to lizards and giant dinosaurs, warm-blooded mammals already lived on earth at that time. The mammals of the Jurassic period were mostly small in size and occupied rather insignificant niches in the living space of the earth of those times. Against the background of the prevailing number and diversity of dinosaurs, they were almost invisible. This will continue throughout the Jurassic and all subsequent periods. Mammals will become full owners of the Earth only after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, when all dinosaurs disappear from the face of the planet, opening the way for warm-blooded animals.

Jurassic period animals

Allosaurus

Apatosaurus

Archeopteryx

Barosaurus

Brachiosaurus

Diplodocus

Dryosaurs

Giraffatitan

Camarasaurus

Camptosaurus

Kentrosaurus

Liopleurodon

Megalosaurus

Pterodactyls

ramphorhynchus

Stegosaurus

Scelidosaurus

Ceratosaurus

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Geological events

213-145 million years ago, the single supercontinent Pangea began to break up into separate continental blocks. Shallow seas formed between them.

Climate

The climate during the Jurassic period was highly variable.

From the Aalenian to the Bathan Age, the climate was warm and humid. Then there was a glaciation that occupied most of the Callovian, Oxfordian and early Kimmeridgian, and then the climate warmed up again.

Vegetation

In the Jurassic, vast areas were covered with lush vegetation, primarily a variety of forests. They mainly consisted of ferns and gymnosperms.

land animals

One of the fossil creatures that combine the features of birds and reptiles is Archeopteryx. For the first time, his skeleton was discovered in the so-called lithographic slates in Germany. The find was made two years after the publication of Charles Darwin's work " The Origin of Species" and became a strong argument in favor of the theory of evolution - it was initially considered a transitional form from reptiles to birds. But later it was also suggested that it was a dead end branch of evolution, not directly related to real birds. Archeopteryx flew rather poorly (planned from tree to tree), and was about the size of a crow. Instead of

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