The Rise of the Dinosaurs

The Start

Dinosaurs are famous and loved through out the globe but there start wasn’t so promising. Dinosaurs (and close relatives) were oppresed by more early developed creatures such as early archosaurs, synapisids, and rynchosaurs. The time dinosaurs evolved was debated in the early days of paleontology. It shifted from the late Triassic, to mid-Triassic, and now people say that dinosaurs evolved in the early Triassic.

Oppression

As I said earlier, dinosaurs were being out compeated by early archosaurs, synapsid, and rynchosaurs. These creatures evoloved earlier than dinosaurs, giving them a head start. At the time, dinosaurs made up only 5–10 percentage of the populatoin, and if I got you in a time machine and to the Triassic, then chances are that you wouldn’t even notice dinosaurs.

The Change

In the 1900’s, many paleontologists thought that dinosaurs out compeated their oppressors in evolution. During the 1980’s many paleontologists tried to argue but the real change in idea came later, around more modern times. In 2012, a geologist did a paper showing that there was an extinctoin that toke place. Some paleontologists toke this papers information and thought that this could have done a shift in the food chain. Now, this event is called it the Carnian Pluvial Episode. This was a major event for dinosaurs because it toke out there oppressers and gave them a whole world.

Carnian Pluvial Episode

The Carnian Pluvial Episode was a big event for dinosaurs. With their competitors out of the way, dinosaurs continued to diversify and take up many niches. We know that this happend because of an isotope analysis showing high levels of gasses which are released when volcanoes erupt. Yeah. Like the Great dying, the Carnian Pluvial Episode was a volcano related extinction. The Great dying happend in the permian, right before the Triassic. It was the most fatal mass extinction. Though, unlike the Great dying, the Carnian Pluvial Episode is not one of the big 5 extinctoin events. To make it even worse, it rained- it rained a lot.

The Reign

Dinosaurs had one of the largest reigns ever and many think it is impossible to beat. They had a whole world in their control and in this time they became highly specialized- some might say overspecialized-which might have been a deciding factor in their extinction in the KT extinction event. Though, even now dinosaurs are all around us. I’m talking about birds. They’re not even direct desendents of dinosaurs- they ARE dinosaurs. That shows the power, control, and persitance of dinosaurs.