Jurassic Forest

Jurassic Forest 

Our scene has an Archaeopteryx (the first known bird) escaping a young Megalosaur called Estreptospondylus.  Estreptospondylus was about 20 feet long and weighed about 1,100 lbs.  Fossil evidence shows that they actually lived a bit before Archaeopteryx, but I am inferring that some may have survived to prey on Archaeopteryx.  OR the Archaeopteryx may have appeared slightly earlier than currently discovered fossil evidence shows.  The Pterosaur is not a flying dinosaur.  It is a flying reptile without feathers.  It is called Aerodactylus.  It had a wingspan of 18.5 inches or 47 cm.

This Jurassic Forest is from around 160-150 million years ago.  By the way the correct name is "Jurassic Period" and it is the middle period of the Mesozoic Era.  The other periods of the Mesozoic Era are the first, which was the Triassic Period.  The last was the Cretaceous Period.  This drawing is a scene from the Jurassic forest in what is now Southern Germany...although technically the Estreptospondylus was found in what is now Southern England.  Still, the animals pictured all lived in what is now Europe so it is possible that they were all present in what is now Southern Germany.  In this part of the Jurassic Period the now continent of Europe was a collection of islands that were close together.  It is possible that the Estreptospondylus could have swum from island to island.  Also, the flying animals would not have been stopped by small channels of sea water.

About the plants:  The branch up front in the foreground on the left is from a Ginkgo tree.  The Ginkgo tree has remained essentially unchanged for something like 200 million years.  This is a rather rare thing... for a species to exists for so long on the Earth.  MOST species last only around 3 or so million years.  The pine trees are obvious.  They DID exist in the mid to late Cretaceous.  The trees that look like palm trees are actually Cycads.  Cycads are conifers and they have essentially pine cones for reproduction.  The flowers are depicted because recent finds from drilling in Switzerland show that flowers lived probably even before the Mesozoic Era.