It seems we have a pretty good picture of what animal life was like during the time of dinosaurs. They dominated the animal kingdom for 150+ million years. They were the king of the jungle when jungle was all there was. But this was on land. As humans that live on land, we place a special importance to what happened on that land.
But the earth’s surface is mostly covered with water. Surely, sea life must have its own interesting history. How good of a picture do we have of what transpired below sea level? I assume it’s not as easy to piece together the story, since salt water probably doesn’t preserve things very well. Plus, things tend to move around a lot under water. Finally, it’s probably just way more difficult, technologically, to explore most parts of the oceans.
There are likely massively more marine and lake fossils available than land fossils. The number of websites I could point you to is enormous, but you could start by looking at the really horribly designed site that compliments the really nice book Oceans of Kansas. If your eyes don’t explode when you first look at it, you will find many useful links deep down.
There are icthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, a vast diversity of cephalopods, fish, a revolution, and most major groups of marine life that are around today were around then. There are places in the world that if you aren’t careful knowledge of mesozoic marine fossils might enter your head the hard way. Heard of the White Cliffs of Dover? All mesozoic marine fossils.
It IS kinda weird that we can readily find marine fossils on eroded mountain tops. Creationists think that’s evidence of a global flood, but real scientists know better.
For every epoch in the past we know vastly more about sea life than life on land, simply because it is far for animals to fossilize in marine deposits.
In fact, the modern era of study of fossils largely began with the discovery of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs by Mary_Anning. These preceded the discovery of dinosaur fossils like Iguanadon by Gideon Mantell in 1822.
Thanks everyone. Had no clue. Are there museums, or major parts of museums, dedicated to underwater fossils? I guess that why I assumed what I did. I’ve been to a few natural history museums in my life, but I think most of the main attractions were land-based. Either that, or I wasn’t paying enough attention.
Most people are more interested in seeing dinosaur fossils than fish or clams. But most large exhibitions will feature a few ichthyosaurs and such. The American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Vertebrate Originsdisplays lots of fish, sea turtles, plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, etc. (There are also two halls of dinosaurs and one of fossil mammals.) The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History also has a Hall of Life in Ancient Seas.
To expand on this, to be preserved on land a fossil has to be in a particular environment, one in which sediment is being deposited. This means most fossils will be preserved in places like rivers and swamps. (The Jurassic Morrison Formation, famous for its wealth of dinosaur fossils, was formed in a swampy coastal plain.) Occasional fossils may be preserved by sandstorms or falls of volcanic ash. But at any one time, on the vast majority of the land surface erosion rather than deposition is taking place, so fossils won’t be preserved there. We know virtually nothing about species that lived in mountains or other upland environments.
In contrast, in the sea almost nothing but deposition is taking place. There are vast areas where sediment is being deposited where fossils can be preserved. In fact, many marine sediments are composed of almost solid fossils, like the Gatun Formation in Panama. It is hundreds of feet thick and extends over many square miles. This cliff and the ground in the foreground are almost solid shell. (Teeth of the giant shark Megalodon are also relatively common here.)
ee before mankind even existed there was an omnipotent power on the earth that had land air and sea travel mastered …… that helped foster peace and understanding throughout the world and had advanced sciences and even worldwide sport that wouldn’t be discovered for millions of years
They had such concepts as conservation interspecies peace and harmony we cant even get back to today
Sadly their greatest invention was lost because their astronomy hadn’t advanced enough to catch the big rock that would doom them all …. The time tunnel!
Even though it took millions of years for humans to understand their ruins and notes when the ancients finally figured it out… it took us out of the mud and caves and started us on a path of enlightenment
It was the trolodons and the benevolent and omnipotent dinosaur train industries!
I mean it makes more sense that the worlds smartest beings until the human race formed all of this before we even existed and all the ancients did was evolve until their intelligence could comprehend such advanced learning…:D:p
Not only do we know a lot about Mesozoic Era (250-65 million years ago) ocean life, we know a lot about ocean live stretching as far back as 540 million years ago in the Cambrian era. Whole classes of extinct creatures like trilobites and strange ones like sea scorpions (cousins to arachnids) came and went prior to the dinosaurs.
No offense, but I think you weren’t paying enough attention. Museum halls are filled with fossils of ammonites (those coiled shell octopus things; the only surviving relatives are the chambered and paper nautilus) and trilobites, both of which went extinct with the dinosaurs, along with crinoids (sea lilies), which were much more abundant then.
When I was a kid, fossil hunting, the primary fossils were sea life, such as shells (brachiopods and pelycpods), crinoids, bryozoans, and (further afield) fossil fish. My “handbook” was the Golden Nature Guide to Fossils, which listed a lot of these, along with trilobites, ammonites, and other sea life far more prominently than dinosaurs and other megafauna.
Of course, dinosaurs are sexy, so they get a lot of “play”, but another type of fossil that is incredibly common, yet overlooked (and, I think, underrepresented in museum halls) are the plants. Lotsa plant fossils out there.
Slight nitpick - ammonites were actually more closly related to the shell-less or internal-shelled coleoids - octopuses, squid and cuttlefish - this includes the extinct internally-shelled belemnitesand the Argonauta (the aforementioned paper nautilus - but be aware that’s *not *a shell, it’s an egg case. The actual animal is a kind of octopus) than shelled nautiloids like Nautilus pompilius (the chambered nautilus).
The confusion is doubtless compounded by there being plenty of fossil nautiloids too. But they’re relatively easy to tell apart in most specimens.
The LA Museum of Natural History redid their dinosaur section a few years ago. Big section on dinosaurs’ watery cousins. My daughter wasn’t interested.
Another slight nitpick–the last of the trilobites died before the first of the dinosaurs appeared–they were in serious decline by the Permian and the last of them died off in The Big One.