Artistic reconstruction of the reptile adaptive radiation in a terrestrial ecosystem during the warmest period in Earth’s history. The image depicts a massive, big-headed, carnivorous erythrosuchid (close relative to crocodiles and dinosaurs) and a tiny gliding reptile at about 240 million years ago. The erythrosuchid is chasing the gliding reptile and it is propelling itself using a fossilized skull of the extinct Dimetrodon (early mammalian ancestor) in a hot and dry river valley. Credit: Henry Sharpe
Reptiles had one heck of a coming-out party just over 250 million years ago during the end of the Permian period and the start of the Researchers Discover That Global Warming Spawned the Age of Reptiles.
Reference: “Successive climate crises in the deep past drove the early evolution and radiation of reptiles” by Tiago R. Simões, Christian F. Kammerer, Michael W. Caldwell and Stephanie E. Pierce, 19 August 2022, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abq1898