Triassic

which is why they have their pyramid-like shape.

When he was asked, why do these natural happenings have parallel layered stone? He replied that they date back 200 million years to the early to the middle Triassic ages.

Pinning this date down.

200 million years.

Right.

200 million years ago.

The early to the middle Triassic ages.

This guy is just amazing.

His working day had started unpropitiously, since an aeroplane survey of the nearly exposed rock surfaces showed an entire absence of those archaic and primordial strata for which he was looking, and which formed so great a part of the colossal peaks that loomed up at a tantalizing distance from the camp.

Most of the rocks glimpsed were apparently Jurassic and Comanchean sandstones and Permian and Triassic schists, with now and then a glossy black outcropping suggesting a hard and slaty coal.

This rather discouraged lake, whose plans all hinged on unearthing specimens more than five hundred million years older, It was clear to him that in order to recover the archaic slate vein in which he had found the odd markings, he would have to make a long sledge trip from these foothills to the steep slopes of the gigantic mountains themselves.

He had resolved, nevertheless, to do some local boring as part of the expedition's general program.

There's a famous one called Proganicheles.

which is from the late Triassic of Germany.

And there's also one called Chianticheles, which is from the early Jurassic of the US.

And these are kind of completely accepted to be stem turtles, so early turtles.

And not only that, but they were able to make a massive comeback, which for a long time was a literal mystery to paleontologists, but is now partially believed to be due to their capability of hiding in the sparse bodies of water that remained, being able to go long durations without food, and successfully preying on freshwater fish that were inaccessible to terrestrial predators.

Whatever the case though, it was the amphibians who were arguably one of the few benefactors of the Great Dying, quickly repopulating the Triassic waterways and establishing themselves for one last time as the true river monsters of Earth.

Some of the groups I mentioned consisted of this last hurrah, but again like last time, there were new faces as well, one of the more prominent being the capetosaurs, a group of relatively large amphibians that held a wide range across Pangea, living within rivers and lakes.

They seem to have filled niches similar to modern crocodiles, relying on ambushes and having a powerful set of broad jaws featuring piercing massive tusks and fangs, which just seems to be a trend amongst hemospondyls.

Numerous genera of capytosaurs were larger hunters, but the biggest by a clear margin was easily the mastodonsaurus, a middle Triassic member from Europe that was an apex predator in both freshwater and even potentially marine ecosystems.

thanks to its huge jaws, a powerful tail, and not to mention giant size, with this thing being a true behemoth, as it was one of the largest amphibians ever, and breaking the Prionosuchus's previous record, with adults being able to measure up to 6 meters or 20 feet long, while then also weighing up to 2 freaking tons, and isolated teeth fragments suggest they could get bigger than even this.

So to put that into perspective, we are essentially talking about killer salamanders that somewhat resemble crocs, but are the size of rhinos, who fed on not only just about every fish around them, but also the newly evolved archosaurs that dared to risk a drink.

And considering these lands were so brutally hot, hunting animals would have been like stealing candy from a baby.

One of a number of great prehistoric macro predators which ultimately ran aground under the relentless pressure of Earth's oceans.

Long before the tyranny of the megalodon, they were prowled by a gruesome assemblage of enormous, imposing marine reptiles, which embarked on their own evolutionary path independently of the earliest dinosaurs during the Triassic period.

Around a quarter billion years ago, at the end of Earth's Permian period, life was once again rising from the ashes of a mass extinction.

In its wake came a group of transitional species carrying out nature's next great biological experiment, the return of land-walking animals to water.

It is well established that around 375 million years ago, early lobe-finned fish were crawling ashore and evolving the first terrestrial adaptations like stronger skeletons, weight-bearing muscles, and air-breathing lungs.

50 million years later, they were followed by the family of reptiles to usher in an age of lizard-like dominance on land.

But by the start of the Triassic period, about 252 million years ago, a breakaway group of these early reptiles were making a permanent switch back to water, exploiting shallow coastal environments to ever greater benefit with the adaptations they'd acquired on land.

Their robust builds and improved vision rendered them naturally adept swimmers and clinical marine hunters, and before long, the evolutionary pendulum flipped in the opposite direction.