HEADLINE: Jurassic Sponge Reefs, Floating Wood, and the Triassvival Strategies Post-Asteroid Impact BOOK TITLE: Other Lands, a journey through Earth's extinct world GUEST AUTHOR NAME: Thomas Halliday 200-WORD SUMMARY: This section begins in the Eocene (41

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HEADLINE: Jurassic Sponge Reefs, Floating Wood, and the Triassic Glider Sharovipteryx

BOOK TITLE: Other Lands, a journey through Earth's Extinct Worlds

GUEST AUTHOR NAME: Thomas Halliday
200-WORD SUMMARY: This excerpt details events in the Jurassic and Triassic periods. The Jurassic (155 million years ago) was a time of recovery for marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, following the Triassic-Jurassic extinction, likely caused by runaway climate change. Europe was a tropical archipelago at this time. The largest biological structure ever known was a 7,000 km long reef composed of glass sponges (silicon sponges) in the fringes of the Tethys Ocean. This reef provided a diverse ecosystem, supporting ammonites, fish, and marine reptiles. Unusually, wood floated for much longer than it does today because wood-boring shipworms had not yet evolved. Evidence shows fallen logs floating across oceans and adorned with filter-feeding organisms like sea lilies. Moving to the Triassic (225 million years ago), the focus is Madigan in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia. This lake ecosystem provides a rare, well-preserved record of a terrestrial environment, notable for its extraordinary insect diversity, including most known Triassic families of beetles. A unique vertebrate found here is Sharovipteryx, a lizard-like gliding reptile that used a triangular membrane stretched between its exceptionally long hind legs to glide.