Dinosaurs, But Not Only: Vertebrate Evolution in the Mesozoic

ARAUJO, RICARDO; MACALUSO, LOREDANA; RASHID, DANA; BRUSATTE, STEPHEN L.; MAIDMENT, SUSANNAH C. R.; ROMANO, CARLO; TSCHOPP, EMANUEL; HENDRICKX, CHRISTOPHE; RABI, MÁRTON; WILLIAMSON, THOMAS

Nature through Time: Virtual field trips through the Nature of the past

Springer International Publishing

Lugar: Cham; Año: 2020; p. 187 - 208

If we imagine walking through Mesozoic lands, we wouldbe able to observe vertebrates with peculiar combinationsof morphological traits, some of which would seem to beintermediary to animals seen today. We would witness aterrestrial vertebrate fauna dominated by dinosaurs of varioussizes and diversity, accompanied by many other animalgroups that often are overlooked. Current research suggeststhat many of the main vertebrate clades existingtoday originated or diversified sometime in the Triassic orEarly to Middle Jurassic. Herein, we profile some of themajor transformations in both terrestrial and aquatic vertebrateevolution during the Mesozoic. We highlight: theappearance of features that allowed sauropod dinosaurs tobecome the largest animals to ever walk on Earth?s continents,the appearance of herbivory among the usually carnivoroustheropod dinosaurs, and we follow the specificchanges that led to the evolution of avian flight. OurMesozoic tour across the globe will allow us to see howdifferent evolutionary forces led to convergent shifts toquadrupedality in ornithischian dinosaurs and to an aquaticlifestyle in turtles, crocodiles, and plesiosaurs. Last, but notleast, we examine changes in the Mesozoic fauna linked tothe rise of mammals, and the diversification patterns in severalclades of fishes after the End-PermianMass Extinction.