Page 16 - Dinosaur (DK Eyewitness Books)

Europe Cretaceous times
North
America Asia
West Tethys
Africa Sea TȩȦ ȤȳȦȵȢȤȦȰȶȴ ȱȦȳȪȰȥ lasted from 145 to
Africa India
65 million years ago and closed the Mesozoic Era,
South
America marking the climax of the Age of Dinosaurs.
Climates remained warm or mild, but great
Australia
changes happened to our planet. Flowering
Antarctica
plants began to replace older kinds, seas
THE CRETACEOUS WORLD flooded low-lying lands, and continents
In the Cretaceous Period, the split up and moved apart. As the
supercontinents Laurasia and
Gondwana broke up completely. landmasses separated, the dinosaurs
Their fragments gradually took that became cut off from one
on the shapes of the continents
we know today. By the end of this another adapted to different
period, most had drifted close to
their present positions, but India environments. In the late
had not yet docked with Asia. For Cretaceous Period, there
a while, shallow seas overflowed
stretches of low-lying land. were probably more kinds
of dinosaur than ever before.

Upper part of trunk
covered with leaves

FROM FOLIAGE TO FLOWERS
Early in the Cretaceous Period, plants such
as conifers, cycads, and ferns still covered
the land. A strange tree-fern called
Tempskya was widespread in the northern
continents. It had a false trunk made of
stems surrounded by roots, with leaves
that grew outward. Angiosperms, or
flowering plants, appeared for the first time.
They began to grow on open ground and spread
out from the tropics, changing landscapes forever.
Most early kinds of angiosperm were probably small
and weedy, but some gave rise to shrubs and small trees.
Magnolia By the end of the Cretaceous Period, magnolias and
flower other flowering trees had formed extensive forests.

Tempskya tree-fern forest
AN AGE OF DIVERSITY
Cretaceous dinosaurs included some of the most massive
sauropods and theropods of all time. Theropods now also
included an amazing variety of feathered birds and birdlike
dinosaurs—some smaller than a sparrow, and others as
large as an elephant. Stegosaurs had vanished, but the
horned dinosaurs appeared, as did the largest ankylosaurs
and ornithopods.

SAUROPELTA (115 MYA) ALXASAURUS (110 MYA) STYRACOSAURUS (76.5 MYA)
Twice the length of a large rhinoceros, Sauropelta Alxasaurus (“Alxa lizard”) from China’s Alxa A large horned dinosaur from North America,
was an ankylosaur that roamed the Early Cretaceous Desert was an early therizinosauroid—one of Styracosaurus measured 18 ft (5.5 m) in length and
woodlands in western North America. Bony cones a group of pot-bellied, plant-eating theropods got its name from the long spikes on its neck frill.
and studs guarded its back and tail against attack. probably covered in feathery down. Its sharp beak could slice through tough vegetation.

14