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What are Some Mesozoic Animals?

Michael Anissimov
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Updated: May 21, 2024
Views: 15,238
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The Mesozoic Era was a huge geologic era that extends from 251 to 65 million years ago, for a total length of about 186 million years. It is preceded by the Paleozoic and followed by the Cenozoic. Mesozoic means "middle animal life", as it refers to the middle era of animal life. Except for the very beginning of the Mesozoic, the Earth was mostly warm and humid, with high sea levels and continental arrangements substantially different than today's. Forests extended to high latitudes in the north and south, and the polar ice caps of today were mostly absent.

The Mesozoic is appropriately known as the Age of Reptiles or Age of the Dinosaurs, though dinosaurs didn't evolve until about 20 million years into the period. The Mesozoic began after the worst mass extinction in the history of the planet, the Permian-Triassic extinction, which wiped out 98% of marine genera and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate genera. Before the extinction, the ancestors of mammals, called synapsids, were the dominant terrestrial creatures, but just a few million years into the Mesozoic, reptiles -- especially archosaurian reptiles — began to rapidly diversify and take over ecosystems. This event is known as the Triassic takeover.

Mesozoic animals included the early dicynodonts, pig-sized tusked animals that are the distant ancestors of mammals and used to be called mammal-like reptiles even though they are nothing like reptiles. Dicynodonts evolved into the pig to ox-sized kannemeyeriidae, stocky Mesozoic animals that were the dominant herbivores throughout the Triassic period, which is the beginning of the Mesozoic. Other Mesozoic animals from the earlier period included the rhynchosaurs, small and abundant reptilian herbivores with sharp beaks, and the early archosaurians, which started to race ahead of synapsids because of their faster progress towards erect limbs, which conserve energy, and their ability to conserve water better.

Of course, the dominant Mesozoic animals were the dinosaurs and their relatives, like pterosaurs (winged reptiles) and plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and mosasaurs (marine reptiles). Appearing about 230 million years ago as small bipedal predators, dinosaurs had a slow start until the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, which wiped out competitors such as aetosaurs, ornithosuchids, phytosaurs, and rauisuchians, leaving the world wide open for dinosaur radiation and dominance. Some of the famous dinosaur groups that wandered the world for most of the Mesozoic include the theropods (which includes all dinosaur predators), armored dinosaurs like Ankylosaurus, assorted small herbivorous dinosaurs, and the gigantic sauropods, the largest of which rivaled even the blue whale in size. Many more Mesozoic animals remain to be discovered, even though we currently recognize many tens of thousands of species.

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Michael Anissimov
By Michael Anissimov
Michael Anissimov is a dedicated All The Science contributor and brings his expertise in paleontology, physics, biology, astronomy, chemistry, and futurism to his articles. An avid blogger, Michael is deeply passionate about stem cell research, regenerative medicine, and life extension therapies. His professional experience includes work with the Methuselah Foundation, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and Lifeboat Foundation, further showcasing his commitment to scientific advancement.
Discussion Comments
By Drentel — On May 29, 2014

The meat eaters of the dinosaurs get most of the publicity because they are more exciting and make for better movies than the more docile plant eaters, but most dinosaurs were members of the second group.

However, it is also true that there are many dinosaurs we know nothing about because there are long time periods for which no fossils have been discovered, and what we know about dinosaurs comes from our study of fossils. Maybe we'll eventually learn that some dinosaurs were even larger than the ones we currently know about from the Jurasic period.

By Feryll — On May 28, 2014

When we see movies like Jurassic Park and other films about dinosaurs, these animals are the kings of the juggle, so to speak. However, it is interesting that when dinosaurs first came onto the scene they were by no means the most feared creatures on earth.

In fact, the first several million years of the dinosaurs existence, the most feared reptiles were crocodiles. Of course, that changed during the Jurassic period when the dinosaurs rose to be the dominant animals and continued to be so until the extinction of dinosaurs.

Michael Anissimov
Michael Anissimov
Michael Anissimov is a dedicated All The Science contributor and brings his expertise in paleontology, physics, biology...
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