420-71 Million Years Ago (B)

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420Mil BC - 375Mil BC    The climax of the closure of the Caledonian and Appalacian geosynclines in Siluro-Devonian times is known as the Caledonian orogeny. At this time the western and central parts of Laurasia were brought together in a clinch that lasted until late in the Jurassic period when the Atlantic rift began. The Ural sea remained open.
    (DD-EVTT, p.234)

417Mil BC - 354Mil BC     The Devonian Period        
     (www.paleoportal.org/time_space/period.php?period_id=13)
       
    The Caledonian mountains formed in the early half of this period.
    (DD-EVTT, p.21)
    The heyday of the brachiopods was the Devonian period when they occupied the sea floor in amazing numbers.
    (DD-EVTT, p.250)
    In Devonian time the early simple growths of plants were joined by the first fern-like plants.
    (DD-EVTT, p.246)
    By the early Devonian the Appalacian ocean had been completely squeezed out of existence in the north.
    (DD-EVTT, p.226)
    Floating or swimming creatures, such as graptolites, were plentiful in the Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian seas, but together with other shallow-water planktonic forms of life they became extinct in the Devonian.
    (DD-EVTT, p.251)
    In the Devonian there was a veritable explosion of the scaled and finny. Perhaps the rivers and lakes of the new Devonian continents became accessible at a time when the fish had reached a point in evolution where they could adopt to non-salty waters.
    (DD-EVTT, p.254)
    Earth movements throughout early Paleozoic times occurred frequently in Europe and North America and reached a climax in the Devonian. Known as the Caledonian orogeny, this climax was accompanied by the intrusion of granites and widespread alteration of the old geosynclinal sediments. Resting upon the eroded stumps of the Caledonian rocks are the Old Red Sandstone formations. Boulder and pebble beds, sands and clays derived from the underlying formations, these beds contain the remains of strange and armored fresh-water fish.
    (DD-EVTT, p.197)
    The land area that arose in the North Atlantic region has been called the North Atlantis or the Old Red Sandstone continent. It spanned what is now the North Atlantic but perhaps the lines along which it would break in the Mesozoic were already established.
    (DD-EVTT, p.237)
    A continuation of the Caledonian orogeny along the maritime coast of Canada is called the Acadian earth movement.
    (DD-EVTT, p.236)
    Nearly all the continent of N. America was covered by transgressive seas in the Ordovician and the Devonian, and again in the Cretaceous.
    (DD-EVTT, p.171)
    In eastern Australia a large mobile best lasted until the Permian period. This, the Tasmanian geosyncline, experienced many disturbances and volcanic episodes alternating with quiet periods.
    (DD-EVTT, p.240)

415Mil BC    The lighthouse at Peggy's Cove in Halifax, Canada, stands on granite boulders of this age.
    (SFEC, 11/28/99, p.T8)

415Mil BC - 360Mil BC    In Devonian strata from Greenland in 1948 there was found the fossil, Ichthyostega, the earliest and most primitive of known fossil amphibian.
    (E&IH, 1973, p.125)

412Mil BC - 354Mil BC    The Devonian. Placoderms, fishes with armored heads and trunks were abundant during the Devonian but died out towards the end. They moved their tails from side to side and included Dunkleosteus.
    (NH, 6/96, p.24)

410Mil BC    The placoderm Minjinia turgenensis, a type of armored fish, lived about this time. In 2020 the fossil of a partial skull was found in Turgen, a district of Mongolia. Placoderms are an immediate common ancestor of both chondrichthyans and osteichthyans, which are though to have split from each other about 400m years ago.
    (Econ., 9/12/20, p.69)

400Mil BC    Scientists in 2004 reported that an insect fossil named Rhyniognatha, found in Scotland in the 1920s, dated to this time and speculated that it had wings and could fly.
    (SFC, 2/12/04, p.A2)
400Mil BC    Scientists in 2006 reported that an armored fish from this time called Dunkleosteus terreli grew up to 30 feet, weighed as much as 4 tons, and used its powerful toothless jaws to tear food apart.
    (SFC, 11/29/06, p.A6)       
400Mil BC    Fossil remains of coelacanth fish have been identified in deposits dating back nearly 400 million years. The fish has a rostral organ in its skull, a feature similar to one that sharks use to detect the weak electric fields given off by their prey. Living specimens in 1938 were caught off the coast of East Africa and in 1998 were caught in Indonesian waters. The females were found to bear live young following internal fertilization.
    (NG, 6/1988, p.833-834)(SFC, 9/24/98, p.A2)
400Mil BC     The evolutionary path of sharks and humans parted about this time.
    (NH, 9/96, p.40)
400Mil BC    Subduction of the Pacific plate under the American continent formed the Kalmiopsis wilderness in southeastern Oregon.
    (SFEC, 6/20/99, p.T8)
400Mil BC    Astronomers in 2002 identified a binary black hole from this time that resulted from the collision of 2 galaxies and blended to form NGC6240.
    (SFC, 11/25/02, p.A6)

400Mil BC - 300Mil BC    Mid Paleozoic:    Laurasia formed about this time consisting of North America, Greenland, the Baltics, France and Siberia.
    (www.historyoftheuniverse.com/cd300.html)
400Mil BC - 300Mil BC    Pan-African orogenies. This period of transformation almost doubled the stable crust in Africa. The previously separate cratons and the newly heated and compressed mountain root regions between them were fused into a single shield. Apart from small areas in the north-west, south-east and the Cape region, the continent had achieved the outline we know today.
    (DD-EVTT, p.148)

397Mil BC    Four-legged creatures were mucking around a muddy basin in what is now Poland about this time. In 2010 scientists reported the discovery of their the fossilized footprints in the Holy Cross Mountains in southeastern Poland.
    (http://tinyurl.com/ybp6x78)

390Mil BC    In 2007 British scientists reported a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that was 8-feet long, making the entire creature the biggest bug ever. The fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years.
    (AP, 11/20/07)

385Mil BC    A fish species later called Panderichthys lived about this time.
    (Econ, 4/8/06, p.79)
385Mil BC  In the Middle Devonian the sea slowly made its way back into the continental interior of North America. After this slow start the flooding began to quicken so that in middle Devonian time it reached across the interior around the Canadian Shield. Only the Transcontinental Arch, the Ozark Dome and other minor regions were not covered. To the west the shallow waters spread over an area that began to warp gently into one of the most remarkable of shelf basins, the Williston Basin. The deposits of the Williston Sea gave rise to oil and gas in huge quantities that were preserved in the porous reef rocks and limestones close at hand.
    (DD-EVTT, p.175-176)
    Real forests of lush plants with well-developed leaves and fronds had taken root by the Middle Devonian, and at the end of the period were reaching 7 meters or more in height, towering over a thick underbrush of ferns, mosses, liverworts and other smaller plants.
    (DD-EVTT, p.246)
385Mil BC    Microbranchius dicki, a placoderm fish, lived about this time. Placoderms were among the first jawed vertebrates to evolve and are ancestral to humans. Scientists studying fossils of M. Dicki in 2014 said their physical structure suggested the fish engaged in copulation.
    (Econ, 10/25/14, p.83)

383Mil BC    In 2004 paleontologists found fossils of a primitive fish, named Tiktaalik roseae, on Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Nunavut territory that dated to about this time. The fossils showed evidence of ribs, neck, rudimentary ear bones and primitive limbs.
    (SFC, 4/6/06, p.A1)(Econ, 4/8/06, p.79)

380Mil BC    Reconstruction from fossils of North American Devonian reef formations of life on a coral reef shows: sponges, corals, lampshells, snails, trilobites, sea lilies, octopus-like cephalopods, together with fronds of seaweed and moss animals.
    (DD-EVTT,illustr.#17)
380Mil BC    Creatures with four limbs began to appear.
    (NYT, 6/7/96, p.B1)
380Mil BC    In 2008 scientists traced the origin of fingers and toes to fish-like creatures that roamed the seas about this time. In 1839 Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz described a fossil fish that had been found in Permian marl slate near Durham, northern England. He named it coelacanthus. Over the decades similar fossils were found dating from around 380 million to 70 million years ago.
    (AFP, 9/21/08)(Econ, 12/14/13, IL p.10)
380Mil BC    The oldest known insect fossils are tiny imprints of wingless insects found in sandstone rocks of the mid-Devonian period dated to this time.
    (www.kendall-bioresearch.co.uk/fossil.htm)

380Mil BC    In 2009 Scientists from Australia and Britain studying 380 million-year-old fossils of the armored placoderm fish, or Incisoscutum richiei, said embryos in the fish indicated that sex as we know it, fertilization of eggs while they are still inside a female, took place as much as 30 million years earlier than previously thought. They originally thought the fish laid their eggs before fertilization.
    (AP, 2/26/09)

375Mil BC    Coralville Lake in Iowa, USA, overflows a spillway in 1993AD and bares fossils beneath the soil downstream of creatures of the Devonian period. The fossils indicate that the area was under water during this period.
    (NG, Geographica, Jan, 94)
375Mil BC    In 2006 scientists reported the discovery of a predator fossil fish dating to this time in on Canada’s Ellesmere Island in the High Arctic. It was later named Tiktaalik roseae and further analysis found it to have developed a mobile neck, an important development for living on land. The fish displayed bones at the ends of its fins suggestive of developing fingers and toes.
    (SFC, 10/16/08, p.A10)(SFC, 5/12/09, p.A8)

370Mil BC    Devonian corals are now known to have secreted skeletons of calcium carbonate, calcite, in a very regular way., adding tiny rings of it to the top of their skeletal cup as they grew. The daily increments of regular measure repeat in units of 400 rather than 365. At that time the day would have bee 21.9 hours long.
    (DD-EVTT, p.110)
        There were protozoans by the millions. Only when they, too, developed a hard case of calcium carbonate late in the Devonian period did they bequeath something of a fossil record. The blankets of sediment from these tiny animals accumulated with the corals and crinoids to give us the limestone of today.
    (DD-EVTT, p.251)
370Mil BC    Similar corals found in both Morocco and New York indicate that the two areas were neighbors at this time.
    (Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.52)

370Mil BC - 290Mil BC    The Variscan or Hercynian orogeny from Alabama to Newfoundland in eastern North America, Britain, mainland Europe, and coastal north-west Africa. This was another geosyncline-like belt.
    (DD-EVTT, p.198)

365Mil BC     Acanthostega, the oldest known tetrapod, was later regarded as an early amphibian. It used its limbs to paddle along the bottom of shallow bays and estuaries. It was about 2-feet long and its limbs ended with 8 delicate fingers.
    (NH, 6/96, p.39)(Econ, 4/8/06, p.79)
365Mil BC    In 2008 scientists unearthed a skull, dating to about this time, of the most primitive four-legged creature in Earth's history, which should help them better understand the evolution of fish to advanced animals that walk on land. The fossil skull, shoulders and part of the pelvis of the water-dweller, Ventastega curonica, were found in Latvia.
    (AP, 6/25/08)

LOWER CARBONIFEROUS: MISSISSIPPIAN PERIOD 360 - 320 Million Years Ago
    (E&IH, 1973, p.42)

360Mil BC    Towards the end of the Devonian period the seas drew back from the Gondwana super-continent.
    (DD-EVTT, p241)
360Mil BC    By late Devonian time some bony fish not only undoubtedly had lungs, but also had stumpy or lobed fins, the antecedents of legs. The 2-foot long ichthyostega from eastern Greenland was among the 1st fish to move on land. Bony fish were restricted to fresh water until about 55 million BC
    (DD-EVTT, p.254)(SFC, 9/12/05, p.A4)(Econ, 1/27/07, p.82)

359Mil BC    A 2nd known mass extinction occurred near the end of the Devonian. Tetrapods more or less disappeared from the fossil record for the next 25 million years.
    (SFEC, 8/22/99, Par p.12)(SFC, 3/19/04, p.A5)(Econ, 12/10/16, p.75)
359Mil BC    Placoderms died out in a mysterious mass extinction event about this time that could have been the result of a supernova explosion.
    (https://tinyurl.com/y3u2wmzt)

359Mil BC - 345Mil BC    In 2005 it was reported that tracks of 4-legged terrestrial animals dated to this period were found at Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy.
    (NH, 2/05, p.p.16)

c355Mil BC - 344Mil BC    In 2002 it was reported that a 1971 fossil from Scotland, initially believed to be an extinct fish, was actually a tetrapod, one of the earliest creatures to have walked on land. It was identified as a member of the Whatcheeriidae family and named Pederpes finneyae.
    (SFC, 7/4/02, p.A3)

359Mil BC - 325Mil BC    Romer’s Gap. The fossil record for tetrapods was empty. [see 354-344 Mil]
    (SFC, 7/4/02, p.A3)(Econ, 12/10/16, p.75)

354Mil BC - 290Mil BC    Carboniferous period. The first great forests and amphibians appear. This period is broken into two parts for N. America, the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian).
    (www.paleoportal.org/time_space/period.php?period_id=12)
        Upper Carboniferous. Hylonomous was one of the first reptiles. It resembled its amphibian ancestors but laid its eggs on land. Its skull and limb girdles were more robust than that of an amphibian. Its fossils are found in the Joggins formation at the base of the upper carboniferous in Nova Scotia.
    (T.E.-J.B. p.30)

350Mil BC    Time of the Caledonian orogeny in Scotland.
    (DD-EVTT, p.135)
350Mil BC    The initial uplift that formed the Green Mountains of the Appalachians took place about this time.
    (NH, 7/96, p.54)
350Mil BC    Plants first developed seeds about this time.
    (SFC, 11/27/98, p.A2)
350Mil BC    Vertebrates colonize land. Edwin H. Colbert (d.2001), paleontologist, later authored "Colbert’s Evolution of the Vertebrates."
    (NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore, p.124)(SFC, 11/22/01, p.A29)
350Mil BC    The oldest order of terrestrial vertebrates, Caudata, can be traced back to before this time.
    (PacDis, Winter ’97, p.36)
350Mil BC    Cockroaches have survived basically unchanged since this time. They represent 40% of the Permian insect fossils in what has been dubbed the "Age of Cockroaches."
    (PacDis, Spring/'94, p. 45)

350Mil BC - 270Mil BC    The first amniotes were small, apparently secretive insect eaters. The remains of the earliest representatives were found inside fossilized trunks of hollow Nova Scotia logs. Amphibians, newts, salamanders and frogs are all that remain today of a group that became highly successful and varied in the Carboniferous and Permian periods. The rise of the insects provided a generous food supply. The amniote egg allowed the animal to develop to a stage resembling a fully grown adult gave freedom from the watery environment.
    (NH, 6/96, p.41)(DD-EVTT, p.254-255)
350Mil BC - 270Mil BC    Over vast area of the Carboniferous sea floor the crinoids, the delicate, stalked, flower-like group of echinodermata, lived by the millions, raising their fragile calyces as much as a meter from the bottom.
    (DD-EVTT, p.251)
350Mil BC - 270Mil BC    From an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide the growth of the Carboniferous forests may have removed much of it in exchange for oxygen.
    (DD-EVTT, p.247)
350Mil BC - 270Mil BC    In North America forests covered about 260,000 sq. km. of the mid-continent; in Europe perhaps 100,000 sq. km.
    (DD-EVTT, p.238)
350Mil BC - 270Mil BC    Early in Carboniferous time the North American continent seems to have slid quietly under the waves to an extent scarcely matched before or since. For a very brief period there was stagnation... and it became an expanse of dead, still water. Slowly the waters became populous again... and from the North-west territories of Canada to Mexico and from the Pacific ocean to east of the Mississippi there was once again a shallow sea, the Madison Sea. This was the last of the great Paleozoic floodings of the N. American continent.
    (DD-EVTT, p.178)
350Mil BC - 270Mil BC    This was a period during which the plant kingdom reached an unprecedented luxuriance. Periodic salt water flooded coastal marshes and killed off the plant growth. Accumulation of carbonaceous material settled over time to produce peat, lignite and coal in turn. Multiple cycles of climate and or earth movement caused a varying proportion of marine and non-marine sediment to accumulate, which can be measured and which suggest where land and sea lay. The cycles are called cyclothems.
    (DD-EVTT, p.178-181)

350Mil BC - 200Mil BC    Glacial conditions during the Permo-Carboniferous times laid down a series of rock sediment in all the southern continents, Australia, Antarctica, India, Africa, and South America. It is called the Dwyka series in Africa and occurs over much of the country between the southern cape and the equator. In many places they are 600 meters thick. A continental polar region answers the demands nicely with glaciers carrying debris off radially from around the pole.
    (DD-EVTT, p.194)
    The Gondwana glaciations and the Glossopteris forests stretched into what is now eastern India where, again, the ice was moving northwards. In South and East Africa the ice spread northwards as far as Lake Victoria on the present equator. There may have been as many as five major glacial ages with warmer spells between. Between the long cold periods, Glossopteris forest occupied the well-watered lower regions in South America as it did on the eastern side of Gondwanaland.
    (DD-EVTT, p.241)
    As many as eleven successive old moraine deposits, one upon another, are known in Australia. The Paleozoic glacial chill may have lasted 20 million years.
    (DD-EVTT, p.244)

345Mil BC - 320Mil BC    Mississippian Period.
    (GH-ADH, p.25)

345Mil BC - 280Mil BC    A hypothesis was proposed by Gans et al of the Univ. of Michigan that an oxygen pulse occurred during the late Paleozoic. An increase of atmospheric oxygen concentrations from 15-35% may have lasted for about a 100 million years. Today the atmosphere contains about 21% oxygen. The idea is supported by the extraordinary number of new species documented during this period. A dense atmosphere would promote insect flight and primitive lung effectiveness.
    (LSA., Fall 1995, p.20)

345Mil BC - 230Mil BC    Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian. Bear Valley Ranch in Inverness ridge: Quarry, white limestone. Road cuts 12 miles south of Carmel along Highway 1: white limestone. Road cuts between Big Sur and Lucia along Highway 1: mica-rich metamorphic rocks. Metamorphic rocks of Calaveras Formation at the Geologic exhibit along Yosemite Highway 6 miles east of Briceburg.
    (GH-ADH, p.25)

330Mil BC    The body impressions of salamander-like creatures, estimated to be 330 million years old, were later found in sandstone rocks collected in eastern Pennsylvania and stored in the museum in Reading, Pa.
    (AP, 10/30/07)

UPPER CARBONIFEROUS: PENNSYLVANIAN PERIOD 320 - 280 Million Years Ago
    (E&IH, 1973, p.42)   

320Mil BC    Reversing Falls in the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick, Canada, dates to this time and is where at high tide surging salt water reverses the fresh water of the St. John River up 48 feet at high tide.
    (SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T7)

320Mil BC - 280Mil BC    Pennsylvanian Period.
    (GH-ADH, p.25)

320Mil BC - 240Mil BC    The male Y and female X chromosomes evolved from ordinary chromosomes over this period.
    (SFC, 6/19/03, p.A11)

315Mil BC    In 2007 scientists dated plant and insect specimens from a limestone cave in Illinois to about this time.
    (www.livescience.com/animals/070504_chicago_cave.html)

312Mil BC    Spider-like creatures called trigonotarbids lived during this time. They had 8 legs but lacked spinnerets. In 2009 their images were extracted from rock using high-resolution X0ray micro-tomography.
    (Econ, 8/8/09, p.70)

310Mil BC    Animals developed that produced eggs with watertight membranes that allowed reproduction on land.
    (NYT, 6/7/96, p.B1)
310Mil BC    The common ancestors of birds and mammals diverged about this time. A report in Nature, Apr 30, 1998, traced development back using a "molecular clock."
    (SFC, 4/30/98, p.A1,13)
310 Mil BC    Fossils of 2 spider species from Coseley, England, Eocteniza silvicola and Protocteniza britannica, dated to about this time.
    (http://tinyurl.com/44cdmed)

300Mil BC    Indiana was a sea floor upon which rained the skeletons of fossils that later formed into limestone.
    (Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.50)
300Mil BC    In 2009 researchers in Kansas found the fossilized brain of an iniopterygian fish dating to about this time. The fish is a relative of modern ratfishes, also known as ghost sharks.
    (SFC, 3/3/09, p.A5)
300Mil BC    A shark from the Edestus genus swam the seas over what later came to be known as Kentucky, USA. A fossilized black jawbone, believed to be from the shark, was found in 2011 in a central Kentucky mine.
    (AP, 4/9/11)
300Mil BC    The waters of the Rio Negro rise in the Guinea shield of northern South America, which is more than 300 million years old.
    (Hem, 9/04, p.32)
300Mil BC    The fossil record later indicated that cycad plants have been around since at least this time.
    (SFC, 11/14/07, p.G2)
300Mil BC    The Helicoprion (spiral saw), a cartilagenous fish with a tooth whorl, inhabited the seas around this time.
    (NH, 3/1/04, p.76)

300Mil BC - 250Mil BC    Evidence of widespread former glaciers occurs in strata of this age in eastern South America, southern Africa, India and Australia. Similar evidence occurs in Antarctica. This suggests that all these continents were formerly parts of a single continent which broke into pieces.
    (E&IH, 1973, p.93)

Late Carboniferous    Much of southern Africa and the other southern continents was capped by an ice sheet of gigantic proportions in the late Carboniferous. Between glacial spells of the Carboniferous, the Glossopteris and other trees covered the land.
    (DD-EVTT, p.178)

290Mil BC    A small lizard, later named Eudibamus cursoris, became the 1st to run on 2 legs. It lived the Laurasia continent and was discovered in 2000 in Germany.
    (SFC, 11/3/00, p.A1)
290Mil BC    If there had ever been a Paleozoic proto-Atlantic it would seem to have been closed up by about 290 million years back.
    (DD-EVTT, p.198)
290Mil BC    A fish called Acanthodes bronni, part of the acanthodian group of fish, which included the earliest vertebrate animals with jaws, lived about this time. This fish was among the first to split from sharks, whose bones are made of cartilage, to evolve into a line of tough-boned species that later included everything from bony fish to human beings.
    (LiveScience, 6/13/12)

Permian Period    290 - 248 Million Years Ago
    (www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/permian/permian.html)

    Lower Permian Red Beds in Texas and Oklahoma have fossils of the fin-backed reptile, Dimetrodon, which belong to the group called pelycosaurs. They were probably the first stage in the development of mammals from reptiles. These meat eater had teeth of different sizes, long at the front and short in back. The sail-like fin was probably was probably an early stage in the development of warm-bloodedness.
    (T.E.-J.B. p.33)

c285Mil BC    The southern part of the Appalacian ocean and the Hercynian ocean were closed in the late Carboniferous and Permian periods.
    (DD-EVTT, p.226)

280Mil BC     Early Permian in mountains near Las Cruces, New Mexico, where a tidal flat at the edge of an inland sea allowed fossil footprints to form and leave tracks of over 50 different animals.
    (NG, March 1990, Geographica)

270Mil BC - 210Mil BC    The Karoo Basin in South Africa, first took shape in the late Carboniferous and lasted about 60 million years. It is filled with fluvial, lake and swamp deposits including coals. At the end of this period were great outpourings of basalt in the region, when lava flows covered much of the basin to a depth of 1,000 meters, the Drakensberg lavas.
    (DD-EVTT, p.164,184)
    On top of the glacial formations comes a coal measure sequence. The Ecca formations are about 1800 meters in total thickness and contain many beds of thick coal. These were deposited in the Permian.
    (DD-EVTT, p.182)       
    This basin subsided beneath layer upon layer of sedimentary deposits. At least 7000 meters of continental sediments were deposited here between late Carboniferous and mid-Triassic times.
    (DD-EVTT, p.178)

270Mil BC    Octopuses separated from other cephalopods about this time.
    (Econ, 8/15/15, p.71)

270Mil BC - 225Mil BC    Reptiles arrived during the Permian period.
    (DD-EVTT, p.21)
    Only a few species of trilobites were alive in the Permian period and none are known from later rocks.
    (DD-EVTT, p.249)
    In Permian times there was a progressive drying up of the whole continental area (of Gondwanaland). Wide areas of the old shields in Australia and South America were flooded by the shallowest of seas, and when from time to time these were cut off and desiccated, deposits of dolomite, anhydrite and salt were left behind. The ice persisted later in Australia where it stayed till late Permian time.
    (DD-EVTT, p242)
    The Appalachian orogeny seems to have been concentrated into the Permian period in North America. The fierce volcanic activity widespread in Europe was not extended into the west. All of Europe and North America became land. In central Europe and parts of Russia, in the high Arctic areas of Canada and Siberia and parts of the southern USA there were limited shallow, very salty seas. Coral and algal reefs and shell banks sprang up in some parts of the seas, notably in Texas and new Mexico, and in the lagoons deposits of gypsum and salt were precipitated.
    (DD-EVTT, p.240)
    Upper Permian Beaufort sandstones of South Africa have fossils of the mammal-like reptile Lycaenops. Its body was dog-like with its legs under its body. It had long killing teeth at the front and shearing teeth at the back. It was a large group with size ranging from a few cm. to some as large as a cow. The larger ones tended to be plant eaters.
    (T.E.-J.B. p.34)

270Mil BC - 180Mil BC    Wandering over the Permo-Triassic countryside were different kinds of mammal-like reptiles that did not survive the Triassic period. Mesosaurus, a small aquatic reptile, is present in Permian rocks in both South Africa and South America.
    (DD-EVTT, p.196)

260Mil BC    Scientists in 2011 reported the discovery of the remains of a saber-toothed vegetarian. The leaf-crunching animal, about the size of a large dog, lived 260 million years ago in what is now Brazil. Its upper canine teeth were nearly 5 inches long.
    (AP, 3/25/11)
260Mil BC    The earliest dicynodonts known are from remains discovered in Russia and South Africa and date back to this time. They were the first vertebrates to have become diverse and efficient herbivores. They were the first to evolve sliding jaws for crushing plant tissue. The contemporary sail-finned pelycosaurs were also herbivores but they could only chop off pieces of plants and bolt them down.
    (Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.52-53)

260Mil BC - 250Mil BC    In 2005 scientists reported that a steady decline in the number of living species occurred during this period followed by a sudden plunge 250 million years ago. The interval corresponded to a period of prolonged volcanic activity over a third of Siberia.
    (SFC, 1/21/05, p.A4)

260Mil BC - 240Mil BC    In 2005 scientists reported that plummeting oxygen levels over a period of 20 million years directly contribute to the “Great Dying” centered around 250 million years earlier.
    (SFC, 4/15/05, p.A2)

255Mil BC    At the end of the Permian a total of 35 dicynodont genera are known to have existed.
    (Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.54)

c255Mil BC    Most of some 25 groups of distinctive echinoderms perished before the age of dinosaurs.
    (NH, 12/98, p.41)
 
255Mil BC    Proganochelys, the most primitive turtle known, appeared in the Triassic at about the same time as the earliest dinosaurs.
    (NH, 6/96, p.38)

255Mil BC - 63Mil BC    The Tethys Sea separated a northern super continent (Holarctica) from a southern super continent (Gondwana) through much of Mesozoic time.
    (LSA, Spg/97, p.6)

254.7Mil BC    In 2012 scientists dated the 40km Araguainha crater, on the border of Brazil’s Mato Grosso and Goias states, to this time. They believed that the release of oil and gas from the impact of a meteorite led to the great Permian extinction.
    (Econ, 7/27/13, p.64)

253.5Mil BC    In 2015 an ash layer at South Africa’s Karoo Basin was dated to this time and indicated the disappearance of the Permian era dicynodonts.
    (Econ, 10/3/15, p.83)    

253Mil BC    In 2008 scientists reported finding cellulose dating back to this time, along with some possible ancient DNA, in salt crystals from an underground nuclear waste dump in southern New Mexico.
    (AP, 4/14/08)

252Mil BC    The worst mass extinction in Earth’s history occurred about this time. 90% of Permian genera of sponges, corals and brachiopods vanished. 70% of land animals disappeared within a million years due to a suspected asteroid impact. This was later called the "Permian-Triassic Extinction" and "The Great Dying." Scientists later suspected that an eruption of flood basalt in Russia, the Siberian Traps, caused the massive extinction. In 2004 scientists suggested that the extinction was caused by a meteorite that hit the north coast of Pangea, forming a crater known as the Bedout High, later a part of the Australian continent. In 2005 evidence was presented that the extinction was caused by massive and prolonged volcanic activity.  [see 260, 225 and 200 mil]
    (Econ, 11/8/03, p.78)(SFC, 5/14/04, p.A1)(SFC, 1/21/05, p.A4)(Econ, 2/23/08, p.100)

250Mil BC    In 2006 an apparent crater as big as Ohio was found in Antarctica. Scientists thought it was carved by a space rock that caused the greatest mass extinction on Earth about this time.
    (www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060601_big_crater.html)
250Mil BC    Oil-bearing rock in the Permian Basin of Texas dated to about this time.
    (Econ, 11/26/16, SR p.5)
250Mil BC    South China at this time was a large island just north of the equator with a tropical climate. In 2010 a smattering of fossil land plants from a mountain in Luoping suggested that the local marine community lived near a conifer forest.
    (www.livescience.com/history/prehistoric-fossils-reveal-mass-extinction-recovery-101221.html)
250Mil BC    Onychophorans, velvet worms, become land dwellers and survive today in dark, moist habitats like the floor of the Costa Rican forest. Probably related to the Burgess shale Aysheaia. The onychophorans are among the few animals other than mammals with placentas, and give live birth.
    (NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore, p.136)
250Mil BC    Coiled tubes in the 250 million year old rocks of the Karoo region of South Africa indicate the presence of Diictadon galeops, a far-distant relative of mammals. The adults were the size of small dogs with long slinky bodies and are thought to have made the burrows along river banks for brooding. They belonged to a group of animals known as dicynodonts, and most were squat, barrel-bodied, lumbering beasts that ranged from rat to hippo size. The Karoo region at this time was a vast plain crisscrossed by rivers the size of the Mississippi.
    (Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.50,52)
250Mil BC    The fossil of the first known reptile to fly, Coelurosauravus jaekeli, revealed a membrane that stretched between hollow rods that grew out from the skin on its sides. In every other animal that flies wing support draws on the normal skeleton.
    (SFC, 3/7/96, p.A9)
250Mil BC    It was reported in 2000 that scientists had brought to life 4 strains of bacteria entombed in salt crystals of New Mexico rock for 250 million years.
    (SFC, 10/19/00, p.A1)
250Mil BC    The archosaurs diversified about this time into two lineages, one leading to crocodiles and the other to metatarsalins, which included dinosaurs and eventually birds.
    (SFC, 4/13/17, p.A7)

250Mil BC - 200Mil BC    The Chinle Formation of sedimentary rock was laid down by rivers in much of New Mexico and Arizona during this period. In 2007 scientists reported that fossil bones found in the Chinle Formation indicated that dinosaurs and their early relatives lived side by side for millions of years before the relatives died off leaving dinosaurs to dominate.
    (SFC, 7/20/07, p.A4)

250Mil BC - Present: Marine scientists say that 8 extinctions occurred in the seas over this period at intervals of about 26 million years.
    (SFEC, 9/7/97, Z1 p.5)

c248Mil BC    In 2003 Richard Ellis authored "Sea Dragons," which focused on ocean life of this time.
    (WSJ, 10/24/03, p.W8)


248Mil BC - 206 Million Years Ago Triassic Period    The 1st period of the Mesozoic
    (www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mesozoic/triassic/triassic.html)

248Mil BC - 65Mil BC     Mesozoic Era        
    (www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mesozoic/mesozoic.html)

245Mil BC    The reconstruction of a scene from this period is featured and shows 2 grazing Lystrosaurus and a lurking Moschorhinus in an environment of a fern and cycad lined river.
    (Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.47)
245Mil BC    At the beginning of the Triassic, the sole dicynodont genus that persisted was Lystrosaurus.
    (Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.54)
245Mil BC    Researchers in 2006 said floodwaters likely overflowed river banks in parts of Antarctica about this time, sending water and sand across the landscape and into various animal homes, such as burrows. No animal bones or remains were found inside the burrows, suggesting the burrow dweller must have escaped the deluge. The burrows' sizes and shapes, along with associated scratch marks, are nearly identical to tetrapod burrows found in South Africa also dating to the Triassic.
    (http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=42393)
245Mil BC    In 2012 dinosaur hunters searching through museums discovered fossils of Nyasasaurus parringtoni from eastern Africa that dated to about this time. The creature was slightly larger than a Labrador retriever, but with a tail over 5 feet long.
    (SFC, 12/18/12, p.A1)
245Mil BC    The ancient reptile Teleocrater rhadinos lived about this time. Fossils discovered in Tanzania in the 1930s showed that it had four sturdy legs and a long neck and tail. It was later identified as the oldest known branch on the lineage that would eventually lead to dinosaurs.
    (SFC, 4/13/17, p.A7)

240Mil BC    Fossils of Atopodentatus unicus, an aquatic reptile, roamed the seas about this time. It was identified in 2014 from fossils found in the Luoping formation of China’s Yunnan province.
    (Econ, 3/29/14, p.86)

237Mil BC     Scientists in 2020 reported that fossils dug up in Madagascar, dating to about this time, were those of a pocket sized dinosaur forerunner, named Kongonaphon, that was smaller than your cellphone.
    (AP, 7/7/20)
237Mil BC    A reptile group called lagerpetids, later known from a few partial skeletons from the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Madagascar, first appeared about this time. They were generally small and may have been bipedal insect-eaters and could not fly. In 2020 researchers said the  lagerpetids appear to have been the evolutionary precursor to pterosaurs, which became Earth's first flying vertebrates, with birds and then bats appearing much later.
    (Reuters, 12/9/20)

230Mil BC    A small 4-foot-long, 10-15 pound dinosaur, later named Eodromaeus (dawn runner), inhabited South America. Its fossils were discovered in the 1990s in northeastern Argentina.
    (SFC, 1/14/11, p.A6)
230Mil BC    A small dinosaur, later named Buriolestes schultzi, lived about this time. In 2017 fossils of the dinosaur were reported found in the Santa Maria formation of southern Brazil.
    (Econ, 11/12/16, p.70)
c230Mil BC    It was reported in 1999 that dinosaur fossils, found 4 years earlier in Madagascar, might be the oldest known. The creatures were long-necked prosauropods from about this time.
    (SFC, 10/22/99, p.A1)
230Mil BC    The Panthalassa Ocean covered much of what later became the western United States. Sediments later called the Luning Formation were deposited in what later became the mountain ranges of central Nevada. Fossil ichthyosaurs included Shonisaurus popularis.
    (NH, 6/01, p.22)(www.shgresources.com/nv/symbols/fossil/)
230Mil BC    A long-necked dinosaur called Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, dated to this time, was discovered in China in 2004. Scientists speculated that the long neck might have functioned like a vacuum to suck up unsuspecting fish.
    (SFC, 9/24/04, p.A2)

230Mil BC - 200Mil BC    In 2015 scientists reported that a large primitive amphibian, named Metoposaurus algarvensis, lived about this time in southern Portugal. It grew to the size of a small car and lived much like crocodiles do feeding mainly on fish.
    (SFC, 3/25/15, p.A2)

228Mil BC    Paleontologist Paul Sereno led a team in the Andes that discovered a small dinosaur species called Euraptor.
    (SFC, 5/17/96, p.A-3)

225Mil BC    Icthyosaur fossils first found in 1928 by prof. Seimon W. Muller of Stanford 150 miles SE of Reno, dated to this time. An inland sea linked to the Pacific and submerged California and Nevada during the Triassic.
    (SFEC, 4/23/00, p.T10)(www.factmonster.com/ce6/sci/A0849392.html)
225Mil BC    A 3rd known and most violent mass extinction ended the Paleozoic Era. Some 95% of all species vanished including the trilobites. This was the time that Pangea formed with declining sea levels and massive volcanic eruptions. [see c251 & 200 mil]
    (SFEC, 8/22/99, Par p.12)

225Mil BC - 65Mil BC    Dinosaurs were both numerous and varied in California. In 2003 Richard P. Hilton authored “Dinosaurs and Other Mesozoic Reptiles of California.” California was under water at the beginning of the Mesozoic (255-63). By the end of the era roughly the eastern third of the state had emerged.
    (PacDis, Summer ’97, p.26)(CW, Winter 04, p.51)

220Mil BC    Skybalonyx skapter, a part of a group known as drepanosaurs from the Triassic Period, lived about this time in eastern Arizona. Researchers discovered the fossils of a tiny burrowing reptile among a vast expanse of petrified wood in the summers of 2018 and 2019 using a screen-washing technique.
    (AP, 10/14/20)
220Mil BC    A long-snouted fish lived about this time. Fossils of the fish were later found in China. In 2015 a fossilized jawbone section of a related fish was found at the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
    (SFC, 9/4/15, p.A8)
220Mil BC    In Kyrgyzstan the fossil of a birdlike reptile from this time was found around 1970. The reptile was named Longisquama insignis and its evolution appeared to precede the development of dinosaurs. The imprint of feathers and hollow shafts related it to modern birds. The feather imprints were later claimed to just thick scales.
    (SFC, 6/23/00, p.A1)(SFC, 11/23/00, p.A14)
220Mil BC    Eomaia scansoria (eomaia = dawn mother), a primitive shrewlike creature, may have diverged from the monotremes and marsupials about this time. [see 125 Mil]
    (SFC, 4/25/02, p.A2)
220Mil BC    Bacteria and single-celled animals and plants from this period became encased in tree resin on the northern edge of the Tethys Ocean. Scientists in 2006 studied the organisms in amber of this time from a town in the Italian Dolomites. Ciliates and amoeba in the amber appeared identical to modern examples.
    (Econ, 12/16/06, p.84)
220Mil BC    The beetle suborder Polyphaga appeared about this time as one of ten coleopteran suborders. By 2015 only three of the suborders remained, but no family of Polyphaga had gone extinct.
    (Econ., 3/21/15, p.72)

215Mil BC    In 2009  paleontologists reported the discovery of a small feathered dinosaur that lived about this time in New Mexico. The carnivorous beast was about 28 inches tall and about 6 feet long and contained air sacs along its backbone, neck and head. It was named Tawa hallae after a Hopi Indian sun god and amateur paleontologist Ruth Hall.
    (SFC, 12/11/09, p.A15)
215 Mil BC    The rocks of northern Tennessee began to bend under the pressure of continental collision. Oil migrated from deep in the earth into cracks and folds in the rocks.
    (SFC, 9/3/04, p.W4)

210Mil BC    By the end of the Triassic after 50 million years on Earth, the dicynodonts were gone. Most likely climactic changes that caused increased aridity as Pangea drifted northward toward the equator led to their demise. Only the distant cousins, the cynodonts, left descendants.
    (Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.54)
210Mil BC    Scientists in New Mexico in 1947 uncovered fossil rock from this period. In 2005 a close examination revealed that the fossils looked like a 6-foot long, 2-legged dinosaur. It was named Effigia okeeffeae and identified as a reptile, an ancient relative to modern alligators and crocodiles.
    (SFC, 1/26/06, p.A2)
210Mil BC    Paleontologists in Utah discovered a site in 2009 brimming with fossils dating back to about this time.
    (SFC, 10/17/15, p.A4)
210Mil BC    The Plateosaurus, a peaceful herbivore measuring up to 10 meters from head to tail, roamed river deltas in large herds about this time, when most of Switzerland was covered with desert and its landscape may have looked much like the estuary of the Nile now.
    (Reuters, 8/9/07)

208Mil BC - 142Mil BC    The reptile called a Thalattosuchian roamed a tropical environment in Asia about this time. The amphibious creature represents an early milestone in evolutionary history, marking a transition during which these reptiles moved from being semi-aquatic to wholly ocean species. Scientists In 2007 uncovered the remains of the six- to eight-foot-long reptile in Jurassic rock on private property in the Snowshoe Formation of the Izee Terrane, a rock formation in Oregon. The rock-entombed animal migrated eastward via continental drift.
    (www.livescience.com/animalworld/070321_jurassic_croc.html)

206Mil BC - 144Mil BC     Jurassic Period     
    (www.paleoportal.org/time_space/period.php?period_id=9)
    In 1996 a Jurassic dinosaur fossil was found in a limestone block in Saltrio, Italy, near the Swiss border. The saltriosaur, a 3-fingered, meat-eater, was 26.4 feet long and weighed over a ton.
    (SFC, 11/10/00, p.A14)
    Almost all the road cuts in San Francisco: sandstone, shale, chert, dark igneous rock, serpentine date to the Jurassic. Roads north of Golden Gate and in Mt. Tamalpais State Park: sandstone, shale, chert, basalt. Skyline Drive from Milbrae turnoff south to Woodside: Sandstone, shale, dark igneous rock, serpentine. Mariposa slates near Mariposa in the Sierra Nevada.
    (GH-ADH, p.25)

201.4Mil BC    A mass extinction occurred about this time. In 1999 it was reported that a titanic volcanic eruption occurred about this time and split an ancient super-continent. This process began the formation of the Atlantic Ocean. Half of all marine species died in a few million years. [see 252 and 225 mil]
    (SFC, 4/23/99, p.A3)(Econ, 11/8/03, p.78)(Econ, 3/27/10, p.88)

200Mil BC    Teleosts, ray-finned fishes, first evolved.
    (NH, 6/96, p.37)
200Mil BC    Quarter-inch-long saw flies were members of a family that remained unchanged since this time.
    (PacDis, Winter/’96, p.43)
200Mil BC    A fossil of the winged Icarosaurus siefkeri reptile, dating to about this time, was found in a black shale New Jersey quarry in 1961. It was sold at auction in 2000 for $167,500 and donated to the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.
    (SFC, 7/17/00, p.A1)(SFC, 8/28/00, p.A1)
200Mil BC    In 1983 Paul C. Sereno first viewed fossils of Pegomastax, a member of the heterodontosaur family and one of the smallest dinosaurs that ever lived, in a slab of red rock that was collected in the early 1960s by scientists working in South Africa. In 2012 Sereno, a paleontologist at the Univ. of Chicago and a dinosaur specialist, described the strange anatomy of the specimen, which dated back some 200 million years, and gave the new species the name Pegomastax africanus (thick jaw from Africa).
    (http://tinyurl.com/9kbv45l)   

200,000BC - 50,000BC Fossils from this period of horses, turtles, giant bison and Columbian mammoths were found in 2015 during grading at the Carlsbad Quarry Creek in southern California.
    (SFC, 9/5/15, p.A7)

198Mil BC    In 2002 scientists presented research that indicated a cataclysm about this time in the Triassic due to a comet or asteroid that killed of species competing with dinosaurs. Iridium deposits and fern spores were cited as evidence.
    (SFC, 5/27/02, p.A6)(SFC, 3/19/04, p.A5)

197Mil BC    In 2009 Scientists in South Africa said that a newly discovered dinosaur species that roamed the Earth about this time may help explain how the creatures evolved into the largest animals on land. The Aardonyx celestae was a 23-foot- (7-meter-) long small-headed herbivore with a huge barrel of a chest. The species walked on its hind legs but could drop to all fours.
    (AFP, 11/11/09)

197Mil BC - 190Mil BC        A bed of embryo lufengosaurus bones in southern China, reported in 2013, dated to this period.
    (SFC, 4/19/13, p.D7)

c195Mil BC    A tiny animal the size of a paper clip from fossil beds in China’s Yunnan province dated to this time. It was named Hadrocardium wui in 2001 and was considered as a possible ancestor to all living mammals.
    (SFC, 5/25/01, p.D8)

190Mil BC    In 2008 scientists discovered numerous dinosaur footprints dating to this time at the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument along the Utah and Arizona state border.
    (SFC, 10/22/08, p.A4)
190Mil BC    A 4th mass extinction occurred at the end of the Triassic. Lake Manicouagan in Quebec, a 60-mile crater, was formed by a cosmic impact that may be related to the extinction. Cotylosaurs, a possible missing link between mammals and reptiles, were lost.
    (SFEC, 8/22/99, Par p.12)
190Mil BC    Dinosaur embryos from this time were unearthed in South Africa in 1973. They belonged to a plant-eating group called prosauropods named Massospondylus (bulky vertebrae) first discovered by Richard Owen in 1854.
    (SFC, 7/29/05, p.A2)

187Mil BC    Platypuses diverged from other mammals about this time, making them an important part of understanding evolution.
    (NY Times, 1/10/21)

180Mil BC    Fish shared the seas with marine crocodiles and plesiosaurs and were hunted by winged pterosaurs.
    (NH, 6/96, p.41)
180Mil BC    Sediments of this time from a deep sea habitat teeming with life were later pushed up into what became known as the Glasenbach Gorge in the Austrian Alps.
    (Econ, 5/24/14, p.74)

180Mil BC - 135Mil BC The plesiosaurs were a group of swimming reptiles that developed early in the Jurassic into to main lines, the elasmosaurs and pliosaurs. The elasmosaurs were described by Dean William Buckland as "snakes threaded through turtles." The pliosaurs had big heads with short necks and their bodies reached immense sizes. The pliosaur Peloneustes lived rather like today’s toothed whales, feeding mainly on large cephalopods.
    (TE-JB, p.53)
180Mil BC - 135Mil BC    Pangaea, however, was short-lived. With the extension of the great ocean, Tethys, it split into Laurasia and Gondwanaland. Then in Jurassic and Cretaceous times the Atlantic ocean made its appearance while Gondwana broke up further.
    (DD-EVTT, p.226)
180Mil BC - 135Mil BC     A branch gulf had begun to open and edge north-western Spain away from Brittany. There was new growth of the ocean floor between North America, South America and Africa. Much of the western half of the continent was flooded by shallow seas.
    (DD-EVTT, p.264)
180Mil BC - 135Mil BC     Along the western coastal area of North America it seems likely that for part of the time there was a long, narrow island running parallel to the edge of the continent from Alaska to Mexico. Dinosaurs and marine reptiles have left their bones in this region. The Nevadan orogeny was now under way.
    (DD-EVTT, p.266)
180Mil BC - 135Mil BC     In Antarctica there is a Jurassic legacy of volcanic rocks and some sand-stones remarkably full of plant remains.
    (DD-EVTT, p.268)
180Mil BC - 135Mil BC     Great piles of volcanic lavas and ashes in parts of western North America and around the Red Sea occur from the Jurassic.
    (DD-EVTT, p.258)
180Mil BC - 135Mil BC     The Mesozoic reef builders did not appear until as late as the Jurassic in most parts of the world.
    (DD-EVTT, p.246)
180Mil BC - 135Mil BC     Along the eastern seaboard of Brazil and the west coast of Africa are several thick deposits of late Jurassic and early Cretaceous date. The sedimentary characters and fossils (ostracods, tiny active creatures with a bivalve shell) in these rocks indicate bodies of fresh water.
    (DD-EVTT, p.197)
180Mil BC - 135Mil BC     During the Jurassic period the shells of the ammonites grew in some cases to 50 or 60 cm. and were strengthened and corrugated by all manner of ribs, ridges and knobs.
    (DD-EVTT, p.277)
180Mil BC - 135Mil BC     The more efficient pterodactyls or pterosaurs of the Jurassic had wing membranes supported by the tremendously long fourth fingers.
    (DD-EVTT, p.280)

180Mil BC - 70Mil BC     Dinosaur fossils of this age were later found in the El Chocon region of Patagonia, Arg. They included the plant-eating Gasparinisaura.
    (NG, 12/97, p.123)

175Mil BC    The EETA 79001 meteorite, identified to be from Mars, was estimated to be this age. It blasted from Mars into space about 600,000 BC.
    (SFC, 11/1/96, p.A16)

170Mil BC    In 2004 scientists reported the discovery in Antarctica of primitive sauropod, a plant-eating dinosaur, from this time.
    (SFC, 2/27/04, p.A2)
170Mil BC    In northern California magma burbled up through older, softer rock and formed a granite pluton. Wind and water over the next 100 million years scrubbed the area which later became known as Castle Crags.
    (SSFC, 5/14/06, p.G8)
170Mil BC    The semi-aquatic platypus is thought to have split off from a common ancestor shared with humans approximately about this time. In 2008 scientists laid bare the platypus genome of 2.2 billion base pairs spread across 18,500 genes.
    (AFP, 5/8/08)
170Mil BC    In 2015 a giant prehistoric reptile that patrolled the waters off Scotland about this time was identified. Scientists named the new species Dearcmhara shawcrossi in honor of Brian Shawcross, an amateur fossil collector who gathered many of the fossils in 1959.
    (AFP, 1/13/15)

166Mil BC    Monotremes split off from ancestral mammals about this time.
    (Econ, 3/31/07, p.88)

165Mil BC    Scientists in 2005 announced that tracks of a previously unknown swimming dinosaur have been found along the shores of an ancient sea in Wyoming. The tracks reveal an event when a six-foot-tall, two-legged dinosaur waded into the inland sea and gradually lost touch with the ground. It was about the size of an ostrich, and it was a meat-eater.
    (www.livescience.com/animalworld/051017_swimming_dino.html)
165Mil BC    Middle Jurassic Oxfordian Beds have fossils of Metriorhynchus. It was a marine crocodile of the group Thalattoschia. Its legs had become swimming paddles and its body had become long and sinuous. It did not have bony plates and its tail flattened out at the end to support a triangular swimming fin.
    (TE-JB, p.42)
165Mil BC     Madagascar broke away from the continent of Africa. [see 160 mil BC]
    (SFC, 1/15/98, p.A10)
165Mil BC    The spider named Nephila jurassica dated to this time. A fossil of the spider, about as large as its modern relatives, was discovered buried in ancient volcanic ash in Inner Mongolia, China. Tufts of hairlike fibers seen on its legs showed the arachnid to be the oldest known species of the largest web-weaving spiders alive today, the golden orb-weavers, or Nephila, which are big enough to catch birds and bats, and use silk that shines like gold in the sunlight.
    (http://tinyurl.com/44cdmed)

165Mil BC-125Mil BC    Fossils of fleas, from this period in China, were described in 2012 as being nearly an inch long and having a proboscis with serrated edges for biting and feeding.
    (SFC, 3/1/12, p.A2)

164Mil    BC    In 2006 a fossil from this time found in Inner Mongolia in China was reported to have been a mammal with a flat, scaly tail like a beaver, vertebra like an otter and teeth like a seal that swam in lakes eating fish. The new animal, about the size of a small female platypus, is not related to modern beavers or otters but has features similar to them. The researchers named it Castorocauda lutrasimilis.
    (AP, 2/23/06)

163Mil BC - 144Mil BC    Rhamphorhynchus, a crow-sized flying reptile species, had a 3-foot wing span and 4-inch skull and lived in Europe during this period.
    (SFC, 10/30/03, p.A5)

160Mil BC    A small feather dinosaur lived in China about this time. Its fossils were identified in 2015 named Yi qi, meaning strange wing. Scientists were unable to determine if the creature could fly or glide, do both or neither.
    (SFC, 5/1/15, p.D1)
160Mil BC    A crested dinosaur with probable feathers inhabited northwestern China about this time. A fossil of the 10-foot long relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, later named Guanlong wucaii, was found in 2004.
    (SFC, 2/9/06, p.A5)(WSJ, 2/9/06, p.A1)
160Mil BC    A flying reptile called Darwinopterus modularis, later discovered in China’s Liaoning province, dated to this time. It was believed to be an example of a flying reptile in transition from a more primitive long tailed form exemplified by Rhamphorhynchus and the tailless creatures typified by Pteranodan. In 2011 the specimen was identified as a female carrying an egg seemingly designed for burial.
    (Econ, 10/17/09, p.96)(Econ, 1/22/11, p.96)
160Mil BC    The fossil of 10-foot dinosaur of this time was later discovered in northwestern China. In 2010 scientists said that the Haplocheirus sollers (simple, skillful hand) had short forearms, massive claws, 3 toes, a long beak, a keel-shaped chest and was a member of a family, the Alvarezsaurs, that evolved into birds.
    (SFC, 1/30/10, p.A10)
160Mil BC     Madagascar broke away from the continent of Africa. [see 165 mil BC]
    (WSJ, 9/8/00, p.W6)
160Mil BC    A collision likely occurred in the asteroid belt orbiting the sun about 100 million miles from Earth. One of these asteroids was later named Baptistina. In 2007 US and Czech researchers used computer simulations to calculate that there was a 90 percent probability that the collision of two asteroids, one about 105 miles wide and one about 40 miles wide, was the event that precipitated the Earthly disaster of 65Mil BC, when an asteroid hit the Earth on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. They said another fragment likely created the Tycho crater on the moon at about 110Mil BC.
    (Reuters, 9/5/07)(SFC, 9/6/07, p.A14)(Econ, 9/8/07, p.81)

155Mil BC - 150Mil BC    In mid-Jurassic rocks of Germany occurred the very rare remains of Archaeopteryx, widely considered as the earliest known bird. It was about the size of a dove, had a long, reptile-like tail but with real feathers, not scales, and it possessed teeth in its beak. The first Archaeopteryx fossil turned up in 1861.
    (Econ, 11/10/07, p.101)(SFC, 7/28/11, p.A8)

154Mil BC    Holger Luedtke, an amateur fossil hunter, found in 1998 the fossils of small dinosaurs in a quarry in Germany’s Hartz mountains. They were later identified as a new species from this time and named Europasaurus holgeri.
    (SFC, 6/8/06, p.A7)

152Mil BC    In 2004 a Swiss paleontologist said hundreds of dinosaur prints dating back this time had been discovered in the Jura mountains in the northwest of Switzerland.
    (AFP, 10/11/04)

150Mil BC    A small, chipmunk-sized mammal named Fruitafossor windscheffeli lived in Colorado. It developed heavy forearms for digging in the ground to feed on insects and termites.
    (SFC, 4/1/05, p.A4)
150Mil BC    Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation in Colorado has fossils of Apatosaurus, once known as Brontosaurus. Its name means headless lizard because early specimens lacked a head. It roamed forested plains and swamps in herds but probably spent most of its time in shallow waters. Tiny peg-like teeth were used for water weeds. It reached 20 m in size and weighed as much as 30 tons. A head was finally found in 1979 and was found to be quite long and slender. O.C. Marsh, paleontologist, described a large dinosaur in 1877 that he called Apatosaurus ajax (deceptive lizard) based on a newly discovered vertebral column. In 1879 he discovered the bones of a larger beast that he named Brontosaurus (thunder lizard). In 1903 Elmer Riggs showed that Apatosaurus was just a younger Brontosaurus.
    (TE-JB, p.64-65)(SFEC, 5/30/99, Par p.12)
150Mil BC    Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation in Colorado and Wyoming has fossils of Ceratosaurus. It is also found in East Africa. It was a flesh-eating carnosaur that stood on two feet with the body held forward and balanced by the long stiff tail. It had a battery of fierce teeth, a horn on its nose, heavy ridges above the eyes, and a jagged crest down the back. Great claws on the hind limbs and smaller ones on the fore limbs were used to kill its prey which it hunted in packs. It stood 6 m.
    (TE-JB, p.58)
150Mil BC    Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation in Colorado has fossils of Stegosaurus. The array of plates down its back were not attached to the main skeleton but only embedded in the skin and could have lain flat or upright, in pairs or alternate. Their function is not understood. It was 9 m long and stood 2.5 m at the hips.
    (TE-JB, p.73)
150Mil BC    The small dinosaur Fruitadens haagarorum lived about this time in Colorado. It weighed less than 2 pounds and measured 28 inches from its little jaws to the end of its tail. Its fossils were found in the late 1970s near Fruita, Colo.
    (SFC, 10/21/09, p.D2)
150Mil BC    Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation in Utah has fossils of Diplodocus. Its 28 m length included a 14 m tail and an 8 m neck. It stood 4 m at its hips. Its vertebrae combined struts and hollows making it light and strong. The rear feet had three claws and the front had one. It was a plant-eater and also found near Thermopolis, Wyo.
    (TE-JB, p.66)(SFEC, 4/27/97, p.T1,5)
150Mil BC    In 2008 the Bureau of Land Management in Utah announced a dinosaur find, calling the quarry near Hanksville "a major dinosaur fossil discovery." An excavation revealed at least four plant-eating dinosaurs and two carnivorous ones dating back to about 150 million BC.
    (AP, 6/17/08)
150Mil BC    In 1989 a fossil egg from this time in Utah was found by CAT scan to contain the oldest dinosaur embryo.
    (http://tinyurl.com/fme92)
150Mil BC    Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation in Wyoming has fossils of Coelurus, a member of the Coelurosauria. It had three fingers and stood 2 m and was once called Ornitholestes (bird-robber) for it is thought to have pounced after birds.
    (TE-JB, p.70)
150Mil BC    Fossils of a sauropod named Suuwassea emileae (ancient thunder) were found in southern Montana in 1998. It was about 50 feet long and related to Diplodocus.
    (SFC, 5/21/04, p.A2)
150Mil BC    In 2005 archeologists in Montana worked to unearth a sauropod believed to be from this time making it about twice as old as most dinosaur skeletons found in the state. It seemed to represent a missing link in the evolution of the sauropods.
    (AP, 7/22/05)
150Mil BC    Upper Jurassic Oxford Clay has fossils of Cryptocleidus, one of the smaller of the elasmosaurs, swimming reptiles with snaky necks.
    (TE-JB, p.53)
150Mil BC    Upper Jurassic Oxford Clay has fossils of Opthalmosaurus, an ichthyosaur that became very dolphin-like. It had huge eyes that were supported by a ring of bone that helped it withstand changes in pressure. Detailed remains show that it gave birth to live young. It had no teeth and it is supposed that it caught slow-moving or sleeping prey.. Skin tissues indicate that it was tortoiseshell colored.
    (TE-JB, p.57)
150Mil BC    Australia's funnel-web spiders emerged about this time. Their venom is extremely lethal to people.
    (Econ., 9/26/20, p.74)
150Mil BC    In 1861 upper Jurassic lithographic limestone at Solenhofen, southern Germany, was found to have fossils of Archaeopteryx, the feathered dinosaur. It had teeth in its jaws, claws on its wings and a long bony tail. Its bones were hollow and light but its muscles were weak and it was not a very good flyer. Aerodynamic analysis in 1999 indicated that Archaeopteryx could possibly run to 5 mph and flap enough to glide for some 100 yards.
    (TE-JB, p.61)(Hem., 10/97, p.130)(SFC, 5/6/99, p.A8)
150Mil BC    Upper Jurassic Lithographic Limestone of Bavaria and south-east France has fossils of Compsognathus. It was a small, meat-eating, coelurosaur dinosaur. It had three toes on long hind legs and two fingers and was the size of a domestic hen.
    (TE-JB, p.58)
150Mil BC    Upper Jurassic lithographic limestone at Solenhofen, southern Germany, has fossils of Pterodactylus, a pigeon-sized descendant of Podopteryx. Its wings were supported on elongated and thickened fourth fingers. The effective area of each wing could be controlled by the spread of the hind limbs. The body and limbs were covered by a fine fur indicating some sort of body heat control. A more primitive group was the Rhamphorynchoidea, which had narrower wings and a long stiff tail. Pterosaurs were widespread and have been found on all continents except Antarctica. Pterodaustro scooped plankton from the water. Anurognathus ate insects. Dimorphodon ate meat. Pteranodon caught fishes. Up to this time insects with wingspans of more than 2 feet ruled the skies.
    (TE-JB, p.62)(SFC, 6/6/12, p.A9)
150Mil BC    A small dinosaur later named Juravenator starki inhabited southern Germany. It was found near Solnhofen and was similar to coelurosaurs in China, but did not show signs of feathers.
    (SFC, 3/16/06, p.A5)
150 Mil BC    Upper Jurassic Purbeck beds widespread in England, Europe, Mongolia, N. Africa and N. America show fossils of Iguanodon. It had a pointed beak and grinding teeth that indicate that it was a plant-eater.
    (TE-JB, p.74)
150Mil BC    In 2009 paleontologists in eastern France reported the discovery of some of the largest dinosaur footprints ever documented, measuring about 1.4 meters to 1.5 meters (4.6 feet to 4.9 feet) in diameter. The well-preserved footprints dating to about this time were found high in the Jura mountains, a literal sauropod stomping ground.
    (AP, 10/7/09)
150 Mil BC    In 1999 Norwegian scientists discovered an undersea meteor crater in the Arctic Ocean 125 miles north of Norway that dated to this time. It measured 25 miles wide. The meteor was estimated at 1 1/4 mile wide traveling at 18,600 mph.
    (SFC, 2/9/99, p.A10)
150Mil BC    In 2006 researchers in Norway announced the discovery of the remains of a short-necked plesiosaur, a prehistoric marine reptile the size of a bus, that they believe is the first complete skeleton ever found. The 150 million year old remains of the 33-foot ocean going predator were found on the remote Svalbard Islands of the Arctic. Researchers in 2008 said it was the biggest of its kind known to science with dagger-like teeth in a mouth large enough to bite a small car.
    (AP, 10/5/06)(Reuters, 2/27/08)
150Mil BC    In  2006 scientist reported finding fossils of a large sauropod in Spain from this period. It was named Turiasaurus riodevensis, and estimated to have weighed between 40 and 48 tons.
    (AP, 12/21/06)
150Mil BC    In 2008 scientists said footprints, dating from about this time, showed sauropods traveling at the same speed along a river in Yemen, the first discovery of dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula.
    (AP, 5/21/08)

150Mil BC - 145Mil BC    The Santiago Peak Volcanics took place in southern California.
    (Fremontia, 4/2009, p.27)(http://waynesword.palomar.edu/owenpk1.htm)
150Mil BC - 145Mil BC Most of the dinosaur fossils at Thermopolis, Wyo., were from this period. The area had a humid, tropical climate with many streams. Diplodocus, Monolophosaurus, and Camarasaur, a 60-foot-tall plant-eater, were some of the creatures found.
    (SFEC, 4/27/97, p.T1,5)

148Mil BC    Marsupials parted company with placental about this time.
    (Econ, 3/31/07, p.88)

146Mil BC    The great sauropods dwindled by the end of the Jurassic, at least in North America, and were supplanted by smaller ornithischian (bird-hipped) dinosaurs, such as the hadrosaurs and ceratopsians.
    (NG, 12/97, p.129)

145Mil BC    Late in the Jurassic there was widespread uplift along the west coast of South America, and it was a signal for vigorous volcanic uproar.
    (DD-EVTT, p.268)
145Mil BC    The Late Jurassic ended as the present-day continents began to split off from Pangaea.
    (SFC, 5/17/96, p.A-3)
145Mil BC    Long necked dinosaurs, the sauropods, dominated North America and ate large amounts vegetation. They clear-cut large areas and left the land open to flowering plants and low shrubs conducive to squat grazers.
    (SFC, 10/14/97, p.A9)
145Mil BC    The seas over Nevada receded.
    (SFC, 12/2/06, p.A6)

145Mil BC - 65Mil BC     CRETACEOUS PERIOD       
    (www.paleoportal.org/time_space/period.php?period_id=18)

145Mil BC - 65Mil BC    Researchers in 2009 said fossils from this period, unearthed in what later became the Sahara desert, revealed a once-swampy world divided up among a half-dozen species of unusual and perhaps intelligent crocodiles. They lived during the Cretaceous period, when the continents were closer together and the world warmer and wetter. They were given snappy names, such as: BoarCroc, RatCroc, DogCroc, DuckCroc and PancakeCroc.
    (Reuters, 11/19/09)

142Mil BC    In 1998 a fossilized flower was discovered near Baipiao, China. It indicated pea pods containing seeds, the fruit of a flower.
    (SFC, 11/27/98, p.A2)

140Mil BC    Masses of peridotite rock heaved onto the sea floor from the earth’s crust about this time. It mingled with seabed sediment and merged with an oceanic plate that slid toward the Sierra foothills and the Klamath region of northern California until it hit the North American plate. The peridotite turned to serpentine under pressure and rose to parallel the San Andreas Fault.
    (CW, Fall ‘03, p.42)
140Mil BC    A coelacanth fossil of this age was found in a quarry in southern West Germany.
    (NG, 6/1988, p.833)
140Mil BC    Older [DNA] samples have been extracted from amber--which dates back 140 million years.
    (WSUAN, Fall/95, p.5)
140Mil BC    The fossil record of the Chinese sturgeon below the Gezhouba Dam on the Yangtze River dates back at least this far.
    (NH, 7/96, p.38)
140Mil BC    Fossils of feathered birds, later called Confuciusornis, were found in 2002 in Liaoning province, China. They had bird-like short tales. In 2009 Chinese paleontologists reported that a small dinosaur named Tianyulong Confuciusi, which lived during the Cretaceous period, was covered with feather-like structures -- long before anything like feathers had been believed to have started developing.
    (www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-03/19/content_7594736.htm)(SFC, 7/25/02, p.A3)
140Mil BC    In 2014 researchers said a dinosaur tooth found in Malaysia is at least 140 million years old and belongs to a new species within the "bird-hipped" Ornithischian order.
    (AFP, 11/13/14)

140Mil BC - 120Mil BC    The Archaeoraptor Lianingensis, a feathered dinosaur, lived about this time.
    (SFC, 10/15/99, p.D6)

140Mil BC - 65Mil BC        Cretaceous period.
    (GH-ADH, p.24)
    Road cuts along Route 28 in the Vaca Mountains (Middle California) are: sandstone, shale and conglomerate; road cuts in Niles Canyon are: sandstone and shale; the Coast Highway between Devil’s Slide and Moss Beach: granite; Inverness Ridge: granite.
    (GH-ADH, p.24)

136Mil BC    In 2006 scientist used DNA from spider proteins trapped in amber, that dated to about 110 million BC, and concluded that araneoid and deinopoid spiders evolved from a common ancestor 136 million years earlier. Araneoids produce web strands with sticky glue. Deinopoids produce dry but strong and entangling webs.
    (SFC, 6/23/06, p.A8)   

135Mil BC    In 1999 scientists reported that flowering plants known as angiosperms began to thrive about this time and that the shrub Amborella trichopoda was believed to represent the earliest species of flowering plants.
    (SFC, 8/28/99, p.A4)
135Mil BC    In 1999 scientists led by Paul Sereno reported that they had assembled the fossils of the dinosaur named Jobaria tiguidensis, a 20-ton Sauropod with spoon-shaped teeth found in the Sahara Desert of Niger.
    (SFC, 11/12/99, p.A4)
135Mil BC    A fierce marine crocodile, with a dinosaur head and a fish-like tail, inhabited a vast southern ocean that covered much of what became Argentina. Discovery of a fossil skull with 52 jagged teeth was reported in 2005 for a 12-foot specimen nicknamed “Godzilla” and chico malo.” It was named Dakosaurus andiniensis.
    (SFC, 11/11/05, p.A2)(WSJ, 11/11/05, p.A1)
135Mil BC    A meat-eating dinosaur species, named Spinostropheus gautieri, inhabited Niger.
    (LSA, Fall/04, p.9)
135Mil BC    In 2002 US Astronomers reported sighting a supernova dubbed SN2002bj, reported to be 135 million light years away and unique in that it died away in days rather than months.
    (SFC, 11/6/09, p.A7)

135Mil BC - 70Mil BC        Cretaceous period. Widespread seas. Coccoliths, tiny fossils composed of calcium carbonate, in countless million make the pure whitish limestone "chalk," are extremely widespread in to the early Cainozoic.
     (DD-EVTT, p.21,illustr.#16)
    The grasses did not arrive until the Cretaceous period.
    (DD-EVTT, p.275)
    Nearly all the continent of N. America was covered by transgressive seas in the Ordovician and the Devonian, and again in the Cretaceous.
    (DD-EVTT, p.171)
    Lower Cretaceous Wealdon Marls on the Isle of Wright in England have fossils of Hypsilophodon. It was 2 m long and had bumpy lumps down its back. It had a pointed beak at the front and grinding teeth at the back that indicate that it was a plant-eater. Its leg structure indicates that it was well adopted for running.
    (TE-JB, p.74)
    Lower Cretaceous Cloverly Formation in Montana has fossils of Deinonychus. It was lightly-built, able to run swiftly, and had a pair of sickle-shaped claws. It was 3 m long and grouped remains indicate hunting in a pack. It walked on its third and fourth toes only. The second carried a huge claw that could be swung through a 180’. Its remains were found grouped around a plant eating Tenontosaurus.
    (TE-JB, p.77)
    Africa, Arabia and India were moving towards the Tethyan Trench and the Tethys ocean was narrowing rapidly.
    (DD-EVTT, p.268)
    Both North and South America reached western north-south trench system. The effects of this encroachment were vigorous upheavals in which the Mesozoic ocean sediments were transformed and began to rise as the great Cordillera.
    (DD-EVTT, p.268)
    The super-continent of Laurasia had by the end of the Cretaceous almost ceased to exist. As the continents separated so, it seems, were they to suffer what possibly were the most extensive transgressions to occur in Phanerozoic time.
    (DD-EVTT, p.270)
    East from Africa through Turkey, Iran and into the site of the great Himalayas today, Tethys continued uninterrupted.
    (DD-EVTT, p.270)

130Mil BC    Afrovenator abakensis, a 27 foot, hunter (allosaurus) dinosaur thrived in the tropical paradise of what is now the Sahara desert. The name means "African hunter from In Abaka," an area of Niger where bones were found c1994. A second dinosaur, a long-necked grazer, was 60 feet long. It was a sauropod, akin to a brontosaurus, and similar to animals that lived earlier in N. America and Asia.
    (AP Las Vegas Review, 10-14-94, p.7a)(Video Doc. The New Explorers, WTTW, Chicago, Skeletons in the Sand, Dr. Paul Sereno, 1994)
130Mil BC    Stegosaurus dinosaurs left footprints near Broome, Australia. The herbivorous dinosaur was 9 feet tall and 26 feet long with a double plated backbone and spiny tail.
    (SFC, 10/16/96, p.A10)
130Mil BC    Ants emerged from earlier insect forms with a distinct metapleural gland to fight off fungi and bacteria.
    (SFC, 1/29/98, p.A2)
130Mil BC     The fossil Sinovenator (Chinese hunter) dated to at least this time. A member of the troodontid dinosaurs, it was about the size of a chicken and represented a possible link to birds. It was discovered in Liaoning province in 2002.
    (SFC, 2/14/02, p.A6)
130Mil BC    A small Tyrannosaurus rex from this time, named Dilong paradoxus, was discovered in China in 2004 with evidence that its body was covered in downy “protofeathers.”
    (SFC, 10/8/04, p.A2)
130Mil BC    A mammal called Repenomamus robustus roamed China about this time. In 2005 it was reported that a fossil of one, the size of an opossum, was found containing the remains of a young 5-inch psittacosaur in its stomach.
    (SFC, 1/13/05, p.A2)
130Mil BC    Lines leading to mice and men separated about this time.
    (Econ, 5/31/14, p.71)

130Mil BC - 120Mil BC    In 1996 it was reported that fossils bone were found in a jungle streambed in northeastern Thailand of a 21 foot tyrannosaur. It was named Siamotyrannus isanensis. The finding added to evidence that tyrannosaurs evolved in Asia.
    (SFC, 6/20/96, p.C12)

128Mil BC    In 2003 scientists reported a 4-winged, theropod dinosaur from China’s Liaoning province, which they named Microraptor gui.
    (SFC, 1/23/03, p.A2)

128Mil BC - 121Mil BC    Chinese paleontologists found the fossil of a bird-like beast with the impression of feathers. The feathered dinosaur, a therapod, was about 3-feet long in life.
    (SFC, 10/18/96, A9)(SFC, 3/7/02, p.A2)
        2 turkey-sized, fossil dinosaurs with feathers were found in China in 1997 in Liaoning province. They were distinctly older than archaeopteryx. The birds were therapods and could not fly. They were named Protarchaeopteryx robusta and Caudipteryx zoui.
    (SFC, 6/24/98, p.A4)

125Mil BC    In 2004 Canadian geologists reported the discovery of dinosaur tracks and a fossilized turtle shell, estimated to be about 125 million years old, north of Terrace, British Columbia.
    (Reuters, 9/21/04)
125mil BC    In 2010 US scientists announced the discovery of a small, feathered raptor-like dinosaur thought to be 125 million years old in eastern Utah. The Geminiraptor suarezarum was bipedal and, like other raptors, had a large head.
    (AP, 12/17/10)
125Mil BC    The 12-foot dinosaur named Falcarius utahensis of this time was discovered in 2005 in south central Utah near the town of Green River. It was a primitive member of the therizinosaurs found in fossil bed in China.
    (SFC, 5/5/05, p.A2)
125Mil BC    Meat-eating dinosaurs, known as ceratosaurs, lived in Australia about this time. They represented globe-trotting groups which spread out across the world before the continents began to separate. In 2006 a ceratosaur ankle bone was found near the coastal town of San Remo by an amateur paleontologist.
    (AFP, 5/7/12)
125Mil BC    Eomaia scansoria, a tiny shrewlike creature, lived in China’s Liaoning province. It was the earliest known representative of the Eutheria lineage. It’s fossils led researchers in 2002 to believe that it might be the direct ancestor of true placental mammals.
    (SFC, 4/25/02, p.A2)(SFC, 12/5/02, p.A23)
125Mil BC    In 2020 paleontologists in China discovered a brand new species of burrowing dinosaur that dates back to about this time. The fossils of the Changmiania liaoningensis were discovered in the Lujiatun Beds, located in northeast China in the Liaoning Province, in the oldest layers of the famous Yixian Formation. The Chinese word “Changmian” which means “eternal sleep”.
    (Good Morning America, 9/21/20)
125Mil BC     Zhenyuanlong suni, a close cousin of the dinosaur predator Velociraptor, lived about this time in China. In 2015 a nearly complete fossil was unearthed in Liaoning province, the first in its family to have unusually short feathered wings.
    (AP, 7/16/15)
125Mil BC    In 2009 paleontologists reported that a new dinosaur called Raptorex kriegsteini lived about this time. The nearly complete fossil had been found in northeastern China. It was about 9-feet long and weighed about 150 pounds and appeared to be a miniature prototype of T. Rex, which came some 35 million years later.
    (SFC, 9/18/09, p.A25)
125Mil BC    In 2010 British and Chinese scientists reported that Sinosauropteryx, a squirrel-sized dinosaur from this period, was covered in complex feathers colored in a subdued palette of chestnut and white stripes. It was first discovered in China in 1996 in fossil beds dated to 124.6-122 million years ago, during the late Barremian to early Aptian stages of the Early Cretaceous.
    (SFC, 1/28/10, p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinosauropteryx)
125Mil BC    In 2005 Farmers in Inner Mongolia found a fossil of a small mammal from about this time that displayed evidence of being able to glide. It was named Volaticotherium antiquius. Tests for age ranged as far back as 164Mil BC.
    (SFC, 12/14/06, p.A15)

125Mil BC - 113 Mil BC    The Aptian stage of the lower Cretaceous. It succeeds the Barremian and precedes the Albian.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptian)   

125-90Mil BC    In 1998 the discovery of the Suchomimus tenerensis dinosaur was announced by Paul Sereno of the Univ. of Chicago. It was found in the Tenere Desert of central Niger where a vast lake was located at this time. The dinosaur was 36 feet long and stood 12 feet high at the hip.
    (SFC, 11/13/98, p.A3)

c124Mil BC    A meat-eating dinosaur called Sinornithosaurus, dated to this time, was found in Liaoning province, China, around 2002. The skin was covered with fibers but it had no wings.
    (SFC, 7/25/02, p.A3)

124Mil BC - 110Mil BC    The fossil of a full-fledged bird named Jeholornis prima, found in 2002 in Liaoning province, China, was dated to this time.
    (SFC, 7/25/02, p.A3)

120Mil BC    In 2007 researchers from Karlsruhe's Natural History Museum found a 3-millimetre-long (0.118 inch) ant in the Amazon rainforest and dated its origin back to about this time, making it the oldest still inhabiting the earth.
    (Reuters, 9/16/08)
120Mil BC    Scientists reported in 2008 that a sparrow-sized pterodactyl, which they named Nemicolopterus crypticus, inhabited China’s Liaoning province about this time.
    (SFC, 2/12/08, p.A5)
120Mil BC    A fossil of Protopteryx from this time in China indicated feathers that were held to have evolved from scales.
    (SFC, 12/8/00, p.D4)
120Mil BC    Microraptor was one of many small, feathered dinosaurs, lived in China about this time in time early Cretaceous.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microraptor)(Econ, 11/12/11, p.94)
120Mil BC    A new species of a carnivorous dinosaur from this time was found in 1997 in southern England. At 26-feet it was larger than a velociraptor but smaller than a tyrannosaurus rex.
    (SFC, 1/24/97, p.A15)
120Mil BC    The dinosaur Eotyrannus lengi roamed Britain. In 2001 a 15-foot skeleton was discovered.
    (WSJ, 5/10/01, p.A1)
120Mil BC    The middle of what later became the USA was covered by the Niobrara Sea.
    (SFC, 8/10/00, p.A16)

117Mil BC - 116Mil BC    The Aptian extinction, an extinction event of the early Cretaceous Period, dated to about this time. It has sometimes been termed the mid-Aptian extinction event as a result.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptian_extinction)

115Mil BC    Dinosaur bones from the Budden Canyon Formation of western Shasta Ct., Ca., dated to this time of the Cretaceous. It was a small bipedal herbivore about the size of a deer. It seemed similar to a group known as hypsilophodonts, small a primitive members of the suborder Ornithopoda. The region was a seafloor west of the coastline of this time.
    (PacDis, Summer ’97, p.26)
115Mil BC    In 2006 scientists identified two ancient reptiles that swam in icy waters off Australia about this time. The discoveries, dubbed Umoonasaurus and Opallionectes, belonged to a group of animals called plesiosaurs, long-necked marine reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs. Both creatures lived in a freezing polar sea that covered what is now Australia, when the continent was located much closer to Antarctica.
    (AP, 7/28/06)
115Mil BC    In 2007 scientists reported that large, carnivorous dinosaurs roamed southern Australia about this time, when the continent was joined to Antarctica. The 12-foot dinosaurs were padded with body fat to survive temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius. Their findings were based on fossil footprints.
    (Reuters, 10/23/07)

115Mil BC - 105Mil BC    Dinosaur tracks were made in Australia during this period when it was connected to Antarctica and was located much closer to the South Pole, as a part of the paleogeographic continent of Gondwana. The average temperature of the area was around 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius). In 2011 printed slabs of sandstone were found along the rocky and remote Milanesia Beach in Otways National Park, west of Melbourne.
    (AP, 8/11/11)

113Mil BC    A juvenile dinosaur fossil from Benevento Province in southern Italy was discovered in the 1980s. It was named Scipionyx samniticus and showed some preservation of soft parts. [see 110 Mil]
    (SFC, 3/26/98, p.A11)

112Mil BC - 99Mil BC Most of Nevada was a flood plain and supported dinosaurs including the raptor dromaesaur, sauropods, tyrannosauroids and iguanodonts.
    (SFC, 12/2/06, p.A6)

110Mil BC    The ancestors of modern elephants began emerging.
    (SFC, 4/30/98, p.A13)
110Mil BC    In 2018 Argentina's National University of La Matanza revealed that a team of Spanish and Argentine paleontologists have discovered the remains of a dinosaur that lived about this time in the center of the country. The new species from the herbivorous group of sauropods has been named Lavocatisaurus agrioensis.
    (AP, 11/3/18)
110Mil BC    In 2002 a pterosaur fossil from this time was discovered in Brazil that indicated it skimmed over water for food and had a huge bony crest on its head.
    (SFC, 7/19/02, p.A5)
110Mil BC    The Australia Daintree rain forest of North Queensland dated to this time.
    (SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C7)
110Mil BC    In 2006 Chinese researchers reported nearly complete fossils of Gansus yumenensis, a grebe-like waterbird from this time, making it the oldest for the group Ornithurae.
    (AP, 6/15/06)
110Mil BC    The carnivorous dinosaur Microraptor zhaoianus lived in China about this time along with the fish-eating bird Yanornis martini. A forged fossil in 1999 linked the 2 as one feathered dinosaur.
    (SFC, 12/5/02, p.F2)
110Mil BC     In Oklahoma the plant eating Tenontosaurus roamed the area along with the meat-eating Deinonychus. Fossils of both together were found in 1999.
    (SFC, 2/23/99, p.A4)
110Mil BC    Fossils of Sauroposeidon proteles, a 60-ton, 60-foot tall dinosaur, were found in 1994 near Antlers, Okla.
    (SFC, 11/4/99, p.A8)
110Mil BC     An ankylosaur, a plant-eating dinosaur with powerful limbs, armor plating and a club-like tail inhabited northern Alberta. Its fossils, discovered in 2011, were not supposed to be there because the area at this time was covered by water.
    (Reuters, 3/26/11)
110Mil BC    Fossils of the Nigersaurus taqueti, a  plant-eating sauropod dinosaur from Niger, was reported in 1999 by a team led by Paul Sereno.
    (SFC, 11/12/99, p.A4)
110Mil BC    The giant Sarcosuchus imperator, "flesh-eating crocodile emperor," lived about this time in what later became the Tenere Desert of Niger.
    (SFC, 10/26/01, p.D6)
110Mil BC     A well preserved baby fossil of the therapod Scipionyx from this time was later found in Italy. It was reported in 1999 to have had a hepatic piston breathing system good for sustained activity and swift movement. [see 113 Mil]
    (SFC, 1/22/99, p.A4)
110Mil BC    In 2007 the fossils from Nigersaurus taqueti, a dinosaur of this time with a strange jaw designed to hoover-up food grazed in what became the Sahara Desert, went on display in Washington, DC.
    (AP, 11/16/07)
110Mil BC    Univ. of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno unearthed Kryptops palaios, a short-snouted, hyena-like beast, and Eocarcharia dinops, a shark-toothed, bony-browed killer, during an expedition in the Niger Desert in 2000. The fish-eating, sail-backed Suchomimus or "crocodile mimic," was found in 1997. The animals originally lived in the southern landmass that was known as Gondwana.
    (Reuters, 2/13/08)(AP, 2/14/08)

110Mil BC - 80Mil BC The Pacific Plate collided with the North American Plate at the southern end of the Sierra Nevada and in the process created the Farallon Islands, which then slowly moved north some 300 miles to stand off the coast of San Francisco.
    (SFC, 5/25/13, p.C1)

104Mil BC    In 1914 Romanian Baron Franz Nopcsa (1877-1933) found fossils of small dinosaurs in Romania that dated to about this time in the Cretaceous period.
    (SFC, 6/8/06, p.A7)

100Mil BC    No deep ocean floor or volcanic oceanic islands have yielded rock more than about this age.
    (DD-EVTT, p.212)
100Mil BC    Some microbe colonies became locked in subterranean abodes and separated from the rest of life on Earth from about this time or earlier. Bacillus infernus was later named as representative of this group that can tolerate temperatures of 110-185 degrees F.
    (SFC, 8/22/97, p.A10)
100Mil BC    In 2011 it was reported that the discovery of a single sauropod vertebra on James Ross Island in Antarctica reveals that these behemoths, which included Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus, lived on the continent about 100 million years ago.
    (www.livescience.com/16883-sauropod-dinosaur-fossil-antarctica.html)
100Mil BC    We can date the salt deposits to this time and that may have been the time when the sea began to creep in between the uplands of Africa and those of South America.
    (DD-EVTT, p.197)
100Mil BC    Australia split from Gondwana about this time and began drifting north away from what is now Antarctica, pushed by the expansion of a rift valley into the eastern Indian Ocean.
    (AP, 6/8/06)
100Mil BC    A snake, later named Wonambi, emerged in Australia about this time. It was believed to have gone extinct about 50,000 BC.
    (SFC, 2/16/06, p.A4)
100Mil BC    Pterodaustro, a freshwater pterosaur, flew over a fresh water lake in what is now a corner of the Argentine province of San Luis.
    (NH, 11/96, p.34)
100Mil BC    In 2000 It was reported that researchers had unearthed a pack of large predatory dinosaurs in Patagonia that dated back to this time. The fossils were found in Neuquen province and were named Mapusaurus roseae.
    (SFC, 3/11/00, p.A1)(SFC, 4/18/06, p.A3)
100Mil BC    The Brazilian state of Ceara was at the bottom of a vast ocean whose sea floor was rich in phosphates. The phosphates turned the carcasses of primitive, bony fish to stone in a matter of days, before the natural decaying process set in. Calcite nodules are so common in Ceara that they are used to pave roads. Inside the nodules are some of the best preserved fossils in the world.
    (SFME, 5/7/95, P.5)
100Mil BC    A cricket-like insect of the genus Schizodactylus lived in Brazil about this time. In 2011 it was reported that a contemporary version of the creature had an almost identical body plan.
    (Econ, 2/12/11, p.88)
100Mil BC    Researchers estimate that the major orders of birds and mammals evolved from about this time. They believe that the breaking up of the ancient continents may have may have been the major cause.
    (SFC, 5/16/96, p.A-7)
100Mil BC    A report in Nature Apr 30, 1998, traced mammals back to around 100 million years using a "molecular clock." [see 110 million]
    (SFC, 4/30/98, p.A1)
100Mil BC     Dinosaurs native to Asia traveled about this time over to North America according to fossil evidence in Utah.
    (SFC, 4/27/99, p.A2)
100Mil BC    A burrowing dinosaur later named Oryctodromeus cubicularis lived about this time in the area of Idaho and Montana. Fossils of the creature were discovered in 2005 in south-western Montana.
    (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryctodromeus)(Econ, 2/11/17, p.71)
100Mil BC    Fossils of a predator dinosaur that lived about this time in Utah were discovered in 2008. Scientists in 2013 named it Siats meekerorum, and said it was related to allosauroids.
    (SFC, 11/23/13, p.A10)
100Mil BC    Spinosaurus, a 55 foot, 8 ton dinosaur with crocodile-like jaws lived during this time in Argentina, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria. The Spinosaurus lived in what later became North Africa during the Cretaceous period (112Mil BC BC-93.5Mil BC). Fossil evidence in 2020 indicated that the Spinosaurus was possibly a predatory water-loving dinosaur.
    (http://tinyurl.com/r6kp2)(ABC News, 4/29/20)
100Mil BC    Africa became geographically isolated about 100 million years ago.
    (SFC, 5/17/96, p.A-3)
100Mil BC    Land masses collided about this time and created Alaska.
    (SFC, 4/27/99, p.A2)
100Mil BC    The oldest known penis is about 100 million years old. It belongs to an ostracod, an early crustacean related to crabs, shrimps and water fleas, and was found in a fossil sample unearthed in Brazil.
    (Reuters, 9/13/02)
100Mil BC     About this time a cluster of stars crashed into a larger cluster at about 5k km. per second. This was later considered as the highest energy cosmic event since the Big Bang. Winds generated by the collision created a bullet-shaped cloud of hot gas later named 1E0657-556 (the bullet cluster).
    (Econ, 8/26/06, p.65)
100Mil BC    In 2008 astronomers witnessed the start of an explosion of a star, about the same size in diameter as the sun, that was only about 10 million years old. The supernova in galaxy NGC2770 was about 100 million lights years distant. The observation was made while observing another star well into its death throes.
    (AP, 5/21/08)
100Mil BC    The Earth day at this time was nearer to 23 hours than 24 hours.
    (Econ, 12/10/16, p.78)

100Mil BC - 84Mil BC    During this period of the Cretaceous temperatures rose to 38 degrees in the tropical waters off Suriname, compare to 26-28 degrees in 2006.
    (Econ, 2/25/06, p.82)   

100Mil BC - 65Mil BC    Late Cretaceous granites provided the gold of the Mother Lode quartz veins. Erosion of these granites released the mineral orthoclase and orthoclase-rich sediments and may be observed today in roadcuts along California Highway 128 about 2.8 miles southwest of Monticello Dam on Lake Berryessa.
    (GH-ADH, p.20)

100Mil BC - 60Mil BC    In San Francisco red rock dating to this period was easily visible on the cliff of O’Shaugnessy Boulevard.
    (SSFC, 6/21/15, p.A2)

99Mil BC    A 55-foot dinosaur stalked the river deltas of North Africa. A sail on its back towered over the water as its crocodile-like jaws and curved claws made short work of car-size fish. Fossils of the Spinosaurus were discovered in 1915.
    (NY Times, 1/26/21)
99Mil BC    A parasitoid was trapped in tree resin that solidified into amber in Myanmar. It was later discovered by Bo Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and named Zhenia xiai. Researchers in 2017 reported a hard tick, uncannily similar to those we know, clinging to a 99-million-year-old dinosaur feather in Burmese amber dated to the Cretaceous period some 145 million to 66 million years ago.
    (Econ, 1/16/16, p.89)(AFP, 12/13/17)
99Mil BC    In 2019 researchers, investigating two pieces of amber from the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar, reported that radioisotope dating of the rock the amber was found in suggests it was roughly 99 million years old. The amber contained two feathers. Based on comparisons with previously unearthed fossils, the plumes came from dinosaurs. Researchers discovered 10 insect "nymphs," or immature specimens, preserved with the feathers, anatomically similar to modern lice. Scientists named the new species Mesophthirus engeli -- Mesophthirus meaning "Mesozoic lice" and engeli in honor of paleoentomologist Michael Engel.
    (Good Morning America, 12/29/19)
99Mil BC    In 2020 a preserved skull of what appears to be the smallest-known bird, tinier than any hummingbird, was reported encased in 99-million-year-old amber and boasting many odd traits including jaws studded with numerous puny teeth. researchers said the bird called, Oculudentavis khaungraae, lived during the Cretaceous Period in what is now northern Myanmar. Evidence later indicated that this area was an island in the Tethys Sea.
    (Reuters, 3/11/20)(Econ, 3/14/20, p.65)

99Mil BC-96 Mil BC    A saber-toothed, squirrel-like creature lived about this time. Fossils of the animal, named Cronopio dentiacutus, were discovered in 2011 in the Rio Negro region of Argentina.
    (SFC, 11/4/11, p.A2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronopio_dentiacutus)

98.4Mil BC    In 1999 it was reported that ankylosaur dinosaur (fused lizards) fossils from this time were found in Utah. Fossils of the nodosaur, a primitive ankylosaur lacking a tail club, were also found.
    (SFC, 4/27/99, p.A2)

98Mil BC    In Utah volcanic ash just above a large deposit of fossils was dated to this time.
    (SFC, 10/14/97, p.A9)

97Mil BC - 94Mil BC A giant dinosaur lived in Patagonia about this time. Its first fossils were found in 1987 and later named Argentinosaurus. It is among the largest known dinosaurs.
    (SFC, 5/20/14, p.A4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentinosaurus)

96Mil BC    Paleontologists in 2019 said fossils of the pterosaur, named Ferrodraco lentoni, unearthed in the Australian state of Queensland, lived about this time during the Cretaceous Period. It boasted a 13-foot (4-meter) wingspan, a bony crest at the tip of its upper and lower jaws and spike-shaped teeth perfect for a diet of fish.
    (Reuters, 10/3/19)

95Mil BC    Gigantosaurus, a 47 foot, 8 ton dinosaur with 8-inch-long serrated teeth lived during this time in Argentina.
    (http://tinyurl.com/r6kp2)
95Mil BC    About this time birds that were the ancestor of modern birds, evolved an improved sense of smell. In 2011 studies used fossils of Bambiraptor to determine that birds inherited a good sense of smell from dinosaurs, and then improved the faculty. Bambiraptor, dating to this time, was a fast-moving, non-flying critter about the size of a dog.
    (AP, 4/13/11)
95Mil BC    A dinosaur fossil named Rugops primus (first wrinkle face), unearthed in Niger in 2000, dated to this time. It belonged to a group of southern dinosaurs called abelisaurids, also found in South America, Madagascar and India and indicated the Africa was still connected to Gondwana at this time.
    (AP, 5/30/04)
95Mil BC    Fossils of Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis, a meat-eating dinosaur from this time, was first found in Morocco in the 1920s. Better fossils were found in Niger in 1997. The upright-walking creature grinned with a mouth full of banana-sized teeth, stood taller than a double-decker bus and weighed more than two standard-sized cars. "It seems that shallow seas divided Morocco and Niger, promoting evolutionary separation of the species living in the two regions."
    (www.livescience.com/animals/071211-big-dinosaur.html)
   
95Mil BC    The 3-foot-long snake Pachyrhachis problematicus lived in a shallow sea over Israel about this time. It had short, well-developed hind limbs and may have been related to mosasaurs, giant swimming reptiles.
    (SFC, 4/16/97, p.C14)

94Mil BC     Amber of this age has been found in the Atlantic Coastal Plain of New Jersey.
    (PacDis, Winter/’97, p.13)
94Mil BC    In 2001 fossils of a large sauropod were discovered in Egypt near the remote Bahariya oasis. A Univ. of Pennsylvania team named it Paralititan stromeri (tidal giant of Stromer) after a German scientist who had studied the area.
    (SFC, 6/1/01, p.A1)

93Mil BC    A therizinosaur dinosaur, dubbed Nothronychus graffami, lived about this time. Fossils of the pot-bellied dinosaur were discovered in southern Utah. When alive, the animal would have stood at 13 feet (4 meters) and sported a beaked mouth and forelimbs tipped with 9 inch- (22 cm)-long sickle claws.
    (www.livescience.com/animals/090714-clawed-dinosaur.html)
93Mil BC    From cliffs in the region Kem at the edge of the Sahara in Morocco, paleontologist Paul C. Sereno and team unearthed a 5-foot-4-inch skull of Carcharodontosuarus saharicus and much of the skeleton. Previous fragments of this dinosaur had been unearthed 50 years ago by German researchers, but the bones were destroyed during World War II. Also found was the previously unknown species of smaller carnivore they named Deltadromeus agilis (agile delta runner). It was 27 feet long and would have weighed 3-4 tons.
    (SFC, 5/17/96, p.A-3)

92Mil BC    The New Jersey region was a moist, coastal area of swamps, lagoons and cedar forests. In 1998 a 170 pound piece of amber was found with hundreds of various insect species embedded that included ants with a distinct metapleural gland that secreted acid for killing fungi and bacteria.
    (SFC, 1/29/98, p.A2)

90Mil BC     The ancestors of modern horses began emerging.
    (SFC, 4/30/98, p.A13)
90Mil BC    Scientists in 2011 reported the discovery a previously unknown, plant-eating dinosaur in Angola that dated to about this time. It was named Angolatitan adamastor. The fossil was found along with fish and shark teeth in what would have been a sea bed 90 million years ago.
    (SFC, 3/17/11, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/4k4vtum)
90Mil BC    Mudstone of this age from Plaza Huincul in Patagonia revealed fossil pieces in 1996 of the huge Megaraptor.
    (NG, 12/97, p.134)
90Mil BC    Scientists in 2005 announced the discovery in Argentina of a rooster-size fossil named Buitreraptor gonzalezorum. It dates back 90 million years and closely resembles fossils from the North. It was part of the class called dromaesaurs believed to have originated 180 million years ago in Laurasia. The new find was evidence that dromaesaurs originated in Pangea, before it broke apart to form Laurasia and Gondwanaland.
    (www.livescience.com/animalworld/051012_new_dino.html)
90Mil BC    The Baurusuchus salgadoensis lived in an area of southeastern Brazil known as the Bauru Basin, some 700 kilometers (450 miles) west of modern-day Rio de Janeiro. The fossilized skeletons appear to be closely related to another ancient crocodile species, the Pabwehshi pakistanesis discovered in Pakistan.
    (AP, 6/9/05)
90Mil BC     A desert-based carnivorous dinosaur that used claws to capture small prey lived about this time. In 2019 fossil remains of Vespersaurus paranaensis were unearthed in Cruzeiro do Oeste municipality of southern Brazil's Parana state.
    (AP, 6/26/19)
90Mil BC    The fossil of a snake that lived in Patagonia at this time was found in 2006 with 2 small rear legs. The snake, under 3 feet long, was named Najash rionegrina.
    (SFC, 4/20/06, p.A2)
90Mil BC    In 2001 Paul Sereno, a paleontologist, helped lead an expedition to China that uncovered the fossilized remains of the 25 young sinornithomimus near Suhongtu, a tiny, remote village in the Gobi desert about 370 miles (600 kilometers) west of Hohhot.
    (AP, 3/16/09)

90Mil BC - 89Mil BC    The granite of Montara Mountain on the San Francisco peninsula and the granite of the Farallon Islands have been shown by radioactive potassium dating to be about 90 million years old.
    (GH-ADH, p.20)(SSFC, 7/3/05, p.E3)

90Mil BC - 70Mil BC    Paleontologists in 1997 found an area in Patagonia, Arg., over a mile square that was once a dinosaur nesting site of this period. Fossilized embryos revealed a delicate skin of reptilian scales.
    (SFC, 11/18/98, p.A4)

88Mil BC    In 2000 Scientists in Argentina began uncovering the skeleton of what is believed to be a new dinosaur species, a 105-foot plant-eater that is among the largest dinosaurs ever found, has been uncovered in Argentina. They named it Futalognkosaurus dukei after the Mapuche Indian words for "giant" and "chief," and for Duke Energy Argentina, which helped fund the skeleton's excavation. The skeleton dated to 88 million years BC.
    (AP, 10/15/07)
98Mil BC    Scientists in 2009 confirmed for the first time that Australia was once home to a dinosaur of this time that was big, fast and terrifying. Australovenator wintonensis was a 1,100 pound (500 kilogram) meat-eating predator with three slashing claws.
    (AP, 7/3/09)

85Mil BC    Tylosaurus, a predatory marine lizard, on exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History.
    (NH, 6/96, p.33)
85Mil BC    The ancestors of modern cows began emerging.
    (SFC, 4/30/98, p.A13)
85Mil BC    In 2005 Chinese researchers discovered a bird-like dinosaur that lived about this time. The feathered but flightless Gigantoraptor erlianensis weighed about 1.4 tons and had a beak but no teeth.
    (Reuters, 6/13/07)

85Mil BC - 70Mil BC    Canadian scientists in 2011 reported the discovery of 11 feathers preserved in amber that dated to about this time.
    (Econ, 9/17/11, p.88)

85Mil BC - 65Mil BC    California dinosaur fossils of the Cretaceous have been found in the Moreno and upper Panoche Formations of western Fresno Ct., the Point Loma Formation near San Diego, and the Ladd and Williams Formations of Riverside Ct. These include the Saurolophus, a large bipedal "duckbill" dinosaur.
    (PacDis, Summer ’97, p.28)

c84Mil BC    Garnet-rich crustal rock called eclogite formed below an area that later became the Sierra Nevada of California.
    (SFC, 7/30/04, p.A4)

84Bil BC - 66Bil BC An 85-foot-long dinosaur lived during this period in a region later known as Patagonia, Argentina. Fossils of the dinosaur were discovered in 2005. In 2014 the giant and a smaller speciman were dubbed Dreadnoughtus schrani, after a battleship and Adam Schram, an entrepreneur who financed the research.
    (SFC, 9/5/14, p.A7)

84Mil BC - 82Mil BC    In 2000 scientists reported that the Earth tilted as much as 16-21 degrees over this period when vast chunks of crust dove deep into the viscous mantle.
    (SFC, 1/21/00, p.A3)

80Mil BC     The landmass that was to become New Zealand, broke away from Gondwana, splitting away from Australia and Antarctica as the Tasman Sea opened up. This split off an area about ten times the size of present-day New Zealand, a continental fragment called Zealandia. Full separation took over 20 million years with the Tasman Sea reaching its present width of 2,000 km around 60 million years ago. In 1995 the name and concept for the continent of Zealandia was proposed by Bruce Luyendyk. In 2017 scientists reported that a continent named Zealandia, believed to have broken away from Australia about this time, sank beneath the sea as part of the break-up of the super-continent known as Gondwanaland.
    (http://tinyurl.com/y3u7o99j)(Reuters, 2/18/17)
80Mil BC    Scientists in 2005 reported that, titanosaurian suaropods, plant eaters from this time, dined on a variety of grasses previously believed to have evolved 10 million years after dinosaurs disappeared.
    (SFC, 11/18/05, p.A4)
80Mil BC    Dinosaurs roamed the Sierra foothills. A therapod bone fossil was found in Placer Ct. in 1997, in a geological region called the Chico formation. Here sediment was laid down by the Pacific Ocean whose tides washed the cliffs of the Sierra Nevada.
    (SFC, 6/20/97, p.A1)
80Mil BC    Upper Cretaceous terrestrial siltstones and sandstones in Big Bend National park, Texas, has fossil of Quetzalcoatlus. It is the largest known Pterosaur with a wingspan of 12 m. It was probably a scavenger and was covered with hair.
    (TE-JB, p.81)
80Mil BC    Upper Cretaceous Judith River and Two Medicine Formations in Montana have fossils of Palaeoscincus. It was squat, tank-like, with heavy armor over the back and spikes projecting from the sides. It was 5m long, broad and sprawling. It belongs to the group Ankylosauria, one of the four sub-orders of Ornithiscia. Two other were Silvisaurus and Scolosaurus.
    (TE-JB, p.58)
80Mil BC    Upper Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation in Montana has fossils of Tyrannosaurus. It stood 12m and could only take short steps due to its leg joint and foot structure. It had 15cm long teeth that were saw edged, thin, and easily broken. All this indicates that it was most likely a scavenger. Its skull was loose jointed and it could dislocate its jaws like a snake and gulp down great chunks of meat. In 2002 computer modeling limited its speed to 25 mph at most.
    (TE-JB, p.89)(WSJ, 2/28/02, p.A1)
80Mil BC    Upper Cretaceous Lance Formation in Montana, Wyoming and S. Dakota has fossils of Pachycephalosaurus (thick-headed lizards). They stood on two feet and were herbivorous. They had a dome-like development on the skull made of solid bone, most likely used in combat as a battering ram. It stood 5m and had spikes on its nose and around the back of its skull.
    (TE-JB, p.91)(Econ, 10/27/12, p.81)
80Mil BC    Hadrosaurs such as Brachylophosaurus Canadensis lived in Montana. Biochemical evidence from a fossilized femur later suggested an evolutionary link of such duck-billed dinosaurs to birds.
    (SFC, 5/5/09, p.A8)
80Mil BC    Upper Cretaceous Lance Formation in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana and Saskatchewan has fossils of Triceratops. It was the largest and one of the last of the ceratopsians. it had three long horns on its head and a solid bone shield that swept backwards over its shoulders. They were plant-eaters with hooked beaks.
    (TE-JB, p.58)
80Mil BC    A Cretaceous era creature known as the maiasaur roamed what is today the northern United States. Multimedia simulations by the Royal Ontario Museum have brought the creature back to life.
    (Wired, Dec. '95, p.58)
80Mil BC    In 2013 scientists in Utah unveiled the bones of a dinosaur discovered in 2009. It was named Lythronax argestes, or "king of gore," for its large teeth and apparent dominance as a predator. They dated it to about 80 million BC.
    (Reuters, 11/7/13)
80Mil BC    Fossil eggs and embryos of titanosaurs and apatosaurus of this age were later found in the Patagonian badlands of Argentina.
    (SFC, 9/28/01, p.D8)
80Mil BC     Paleontologists in 2016 reported the naming of Murusraptor barrosaensis, a new species of megaraptorid dinosaur discovered in 2001 in Argentina’s northwestern Patagonia. It was found in rock dating back 80 million years.
    (http://tinyurl.com/gr2lg8p)
80Mil BC    A land-bound reptile, described as a possible link between prehistoric and modern-day crocodiles, roamed arid and hot terrain that became Brazilian countryside about this time. A fossil of Montealtosuchus arrudacamposi was found in 2004 and displayed in 2008.
    (AP, 1/31/08)
80Mil BC    Upper Cretaceous Oldman and Edmonton formation in Alberta, Canada, has fossils of Struthiomimus. It was typical of the "ostrich dinosaurs," the last of the coelurosaurs. Their forelegs had three-fingered grasping hands. The body was long, horizontal, and balanced by a long rigid tail.
    (TE-JB, p.58)
80Mil BC    Upper Cretaceous Oldman Formation at Red deer River, Alberta, Canada, has fossils of the crested duck-billed Lambeosaurus. It had a massive array of grinding teeth, strong hind legs with three toes tipped with hoofs and stood 7 m. The smaller front legs had four toes, two of which had hoofs. There were webs between the fingers and its tail was flattened from side to side. Other crested, duck-billed dinosaurs include Corythosaurus, Saurolophus, and Parasaurolophus. Nests of Maiasaura discovered in Montana in 1979 have a number of young an advanced stage of development that indicate adult supervision of the young.
    (TE-JB, p.58)
80Mil BC    Upper Cretaceous Bahairia Formation in Egypt and Niger have fossils of Spinosaurus. It had fins on its back supported by strong spines projecting up from the vertebrae. It was the largest of the fin-backed dinosaurs and the spines were about 1.8 m long.
    (TE-JB, p.78)
80Mil BC    Caverns at the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa National Park south of Mexico City date to this time.
    (SFC,11/3/97, p.A10)
80Mil BC    An eighty million-year-old egg was found in Mongolia’s Gobi desert by paleontologists who claim it is the first embryo ever found of a meat-eating dinosaur called oviraptor. A report on the discovery appears today in the journal Science.
    (WSJ, 11/4/94, p.1)(SFC, 2/14/02, p.A6)
80Mil BC    Bones from a velociraptor in Mongolia’s Gobi desert indicated that the dinosaur had a wishbone. The wishbone, fused collarbones, later provided attachment points for muscles that allow birds to fly. Also found was a placental mammal with epipubic bones, structures that had been only associated with marsupials and monotremes. In 2007 scientists reported evidence of feathers on the velociraptor uncovered in 1998.
    (SFEC, 10/5/97, p.A20)(Reuters, 9/20/07)
80Mil BC    The Ukhaa Tolgod basin of Mongolia had fossils from the late Cretaceous. The site was first discovered by Roy Chapman Andrews during his 1923 Gobi Desert expedition. The 25-foot tall, 85-foot long Nurosaurus qaganesis was of this period.
    (THM, 4/27/97, p.L4)
80Mil BC    The fossil record later indicated that palms have been around since at least this time.
    (SFC, 11/14/07, p.G2)

80Mil BC - 75Mil BC    In Utah rocks dating to this period contained burrows fossilized in sandstone. Scientists in 2010 speculated that signs of digging around the burrows were evidence of dinosaurs digging for small mammals.
    (Econ, 7/31/10, p.66)

80Mil BC - 70Mil BC     Late Cretaceous to Early Cainozoic.

80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    The Laramide orogeny of the late Cretaceous was largely responsible for the major features in the structure of the Western Cordillera.
    (DD-EVTT, p.291)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    The north-west states     of Washington, Idaho and Oregon at this stage became the site of a flood of basalt lavas from many local fissures. By the time it was over, some 1500 meters of lava flows had accumulated, covering about 512,000 sq. km.
    (DD-EVTT, p.291)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    It might be said that for South America the orogenic crunch came in the late Cretaceous. At that time the giant bathyliths of the Andes were intruded and the whole region was raised.
    (DD-EVTT, p.292)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    Only one family of flowering plants is known from the earliest late Cretaceous, but by the end of that period at least 67 families existed.
    (DD-EVTT, p.281)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    South-west of Delhi and covering much of the north-western half of the Indian shield are thousands of square kilometers of flat-lying floods of late Cretaceous and early Cainozoic basalt, the Deccan traps.
    (DD-EVTT, p.146)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    During India’s passage northward its western margin seems to have crossed a hot spot on the crust. This resulted in the release of floods of basalt over the western part of the subcontinent.
    (DD-EVTT, p.288)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    The Mesozoic era closed with the continents apparently emerging from the waters once again.
    (DD-EVTT, p.270)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    To what extent climactic change set off the train of extinctions at the close of the Mesozoic era is uncertain. The cycads and about half the species of early flowering plants died out and the conifers began to extend their realm little by little from the cooler areas. Floating, single-celled, algal plants became very abundant and secreted the minute limey platelets, known as coccoliths, which built up as chalk. Their photosynthetic activity may have tilted the abundance of the atmosphere in favor of oxygen and depleting it of carbon dioxide generating a reverse "greenhouse effect."
    (DD-EVTT, p.273-274)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    Among the typically Paleozoic groups to fade away at the end of the Mesozoic were certain large protozoans or foraminifera, the trilobites, the strange segmented eurypterids, the rugose corals, many bryozoa, echinoderms and brachiopods.
    (DD-EVTT, p.275)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    By the end of the Mesozoic the ammonites became extinct and only a few species of their hardy but possibly more primitive relatives, the nautiloids, survived.
    (DD-EVTT, p.277)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    The squid-like belemnites together with some families of bryozoa, echinoids and floating foraminifera all disappeared.
    (DD-EVTT, p.281)
80Mil BC - 70Mil BC    A dinosaur the size of a gigantic turkey lived in Europe during the late Cretaceous. In 2010 Romanian fossil hunters unearthed the remains of the velociraptor and named it Balaur Bondoc (stocky dragon). Europe at this time was an archipelago of islands.
    (SFC, 8/31/10, p.A4)

78Mil BC    Fossil bones of a plesiosaur that lived about this time were unearthed at a Kansas ranch in 1968. The 15-foot dinosaur was believed to have given birth to live young under water.
    (SFC, 8/12/11, p.A6)(www.oceansofkansas.com/plesiosaur.html)
78Mil BC    A dinosaur species of this time, later found in Canada and named Albertaceratops nesmoi, was a plant-eater with yard-long horns over its eyebrows, suggesting an evolutionary middle step between older dinosaurs with even larger horns and the small-horned creatures that followed.
    (AP, 3/4/07)

77Mil BC    In 2005 it was reported that paleontologists had identified a new dinosaur species, an early relative of Tyrannosaurus rex that roamed what is now the Southeastern US about this time. The scientists made the identification from hundreds of fossilized fragments collected mostly in Montgomery County, Ala., and southwestern Georgia. They named the new dinosaur Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis, which means "the Appalachian lizard from Montgomery County." The 25-foot-long creature roamed the earth 10 million years before T. rex and was smaller and more primitive, with a narrower snout.
    (AP, 4/16/05)

76Mil BC    The Point Loma Formation near Carlsbad, CA., contained a nodosaurid, a quadrupedal herbivorous dinosaur with an extensive covering of bony armor.
    (PacDis, Summer ’97, p.30)
76Mil BC    The horned dinosaur Spinops sternbergorum, which comes from the same herbivore family as the Triceratops, lived about this time. It remains were discovered in 1916 in a quarry known as the "bone bed" in Alberta, Canada. In 2011 scientists identified the bull-size dinosaur as a new species of the Late Cretaceous.
    (AP, 12/8/11)(http://tinyurl.com/7s7ubxt)
76Mil BC    The 15-foot dinosaur Nasutoceratops titusi lived about this time. Fossils of the 2.5 ton big-nosed, horned-faced dinosour were discovered in Utah in 2013.
    (SFC, 7/18/13, p.A6)

75Mil BC    The Birthday Site of northwestern Montana features 3 types of hadrosaurs: the Prosaurolophus, the Gryposaurus, and the Hypacrosaurus. The Daspletosaurus (a 30-foot carnivorous dinosaur) and the human sized Troodon were also here. The site was shallow lake water and the array of bones indicates some type of catastrophic event.
    (NH, 4/97, p.66)
75Mil BC    In 1994 the fossil of a birdlike dinosaur was found in Montana. It was about 3 feet long and weighed about 7 pounds. It was named Bambiraptor feinbergi.
    (SFC, 3/18/00, p.A10)
75Mil BC    The ornithominids of this time were long-necked, birdlike dinosaurs that evolved beaks with comb-like structures to strain nutrients from water.
    (SFC, 8/30/01, p.A4)
75Mil BC    The 30-foot dinosaur Majungatholus atopus lived in Madagascar about this time. It was similar to creatures whose fossils were found in Argentina and India. The horned dinosaur was a remote cousin of T. rex and had sharp serrated teeth. In 2003 scientists determined that 2-ton, 30-foot creatures were cannibals.
    (SFC, 5/15/98, p.A2)(SFC, 4/3/03, p.A2)
75Mil BC    A small two-legged creature resembling an odd mix of duck, crocodile and ostrich lived in Mongolia about this time. In 2017 scientists named it Halszkaraptor escuilliei after the Polish paleontologist Halszka Osmolska.
    (SFC, 12/7/17, p.A3)

75Mil BC - 71Mil BC     Fossils from Ukhaa Tolgod, Mongolia, of this period later provided the richest assemblage of vertebrates in the world.
    (NH, 7/00, p.51)

75Mil BC - 50Mil BC    Teleost diversity exploded over this period.
    (NH, 6/96, p.37)

74Mil BC    In the Manson Impact a meteorite hit what is now Manson Iowa at an estimated 60,000 mph and formed a crater 24 miles wide with an impact 3 1/2 miles deep.
    (SFEC, 7/5/98, p.A10)

72Mil BC    A helmet-crested, duck-billed dinosaur lived about this time in northeastern Mexico. In 2008 the species was named Velafrons coahuilensis.
    (AP, 2/12/08)

71Mil BC    The Earth's continents were clustered together and sea level was much higher. The Atlantic Ocean was small, the Pacific was enormous and covered half the Earth. The Tethys Sea, a shallow, salty body of warm water separated the northern and southern hemispheres. Enriquetta Barrera, using evidence from one-celled foraminifera, has found indications of a gradual high-latitude cooling and a rapid and sharp decrease in deep ocean temperatures in conjunction with a 150 foot drop in sea level. This lasted about a million years, when sea levels went back up.
    (MT, Dec. '95, p.7)

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