ECOLOGY

Imagine if one day you woke up and suddenly an ocean had started to form between your bedroom and your kitchen. That is kind of what happened to many dinosaurs during the Cretaceous period. Continents slowly drifted apart and as they did, great bodies of water formed between them. South America and Africa had been joined together for hundreds of millions of years and suddenly they began to move apart. One day, the last bit of rock wall that held back the water gave way and the sea rushed into a valley and the dinosaurs on either side were forever stranded where they stood. They still had a whole continent to live on, but surely some of their breeding grounds and feeding areas were lost.

New oceans formed that changed the entire ecosystem In addition to moving continents, grasses and flowers began to appear for the first time. These types of plants had never existed and changed the entire ecosystem. Overall, there was more water in the Cretaceous as an increase in rainfall brought on by climatic changes led to the formation of swamps, rivers and lakes. Much of the rain came as a result of continental drift as changing currents from the newly formed seas drastically affected global weather patterns.

The weather in the Cretaceous was actually quite pleasant compared to the earlier Mesozoic periods. It was not as hot and overall it was more temperate, with less temperature fluctuation. The north and south extremes of land were nowhere near as cold as they are today. There were, however, some bad periods as there was still quite a bit of volcanic activity that would have periodically sent great clouds of smoke and ash into the atmosphere, causing days or weeks of darkness in large areas.