Cretaceous Earth

Question 1

biggest event here

Answer 1

radiation of angiosperms

seed producing plants (like gymnosperms but have flowers and seeds contained in fruit)

Question 2

Cretaceous vegetation

Answer 2

Angiosperms diversifies and becomes abundant

replaces conifers as the dominant tree in late Cretaceous

Question 3

Cretaceous Climate

Answer 3

like a greenhouse; humid and hotter

no longer dry with monsoons

Question 4

Cretaceous Paleoeopgraphy

Answer 4

Gondwana has separated (South America, Africa, India, etc)

North Atlantic opens, separates Eurasia and Laurentia (right and left)

epicontinental seas expand (eg Laurentia’s Western Interior Seaway

Question 5

India moving

Answer 5

rapidly moving north as Tethys sea closed bit by bit

passed over hot spot near end of Cretaceous, fissure eruptions created great outpourings of flood basalt; created Deccan Traps

Question 6

mosasaurs

Answer 6

marine apex predator

18m long, largest as the biggest theropods

fed on ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, sharks, other mososaurs

those with better teeth ate turtles and ammonoids too

Question 7

elasmosaurs

Answer 7

80Ma related to plesiosaurs

discovered in 1988 by father daughter (only one to be found past rockies)

Question 8

Cretaceous Sea floors

Answer 8

corals replaced by rudist bivalves as main reef builder

Question 9

Early Cretaceous Life

Answer 9

large ornithopods dominated (Iguanodon) and nodosaurid ankylosaurs

Sauropods getting smaller, numbers dwindling

Stegosaur numbers declined dramatically, extinct after first half of Cretaceous

Question 10

Late Cretaceous Life

Answer 10

dominated by hadrosaurid ornithopods, ceratopsians, ankylosaurs, tyrannosaurs (north) and abelisaurs (south)

Sauropods only in south america now