THE TRIASSIC PERIOD 691 



The Plant Life 



The record of the vegetation is very imperfect, and it was prob- 

 ably scant in reality, for broad saline basins and arid tracts are 

 inhospitable to plants. The Triassic was distinctly an age of 

 gymnosperms. Ferns and fern-like plants still held an important 

 place, and the Equisetales were more important than now; but the 

 dominance of these types was past. The great lycopods, too, were 

 almost gone, though sigillarias were among their lingering repre- 

 sentatives. Among gymnosperms, the cordaites had declined, 

 but conifers of the types that came in during the Permian, and 

 kindred new ones, were prominent. The cycadean group occupied 

 the place of central interest. The Bennettitales, formerly called 

 cycads, abounded, and from them the true cycads sprang later. 

 The ginkgos (Ginkgoales) diverged from the ancestral cordiates at 

 about this time. 



The calamites had given place to true equiseta, which were 

 represented by forms that were gigantic in comparison with modern 

 types. In the far east and in the southern hemisphere, the Glossop- 

 teris and its allies constituted a marked feature of a flora whose 

 general aspect was much like that of the preceding Permian in the 

 same regions. 



The Triassic floras of Europe and America, so far as known, 

 were much alike, and both bore a scrawny pauperitic aspect that 

 reflected the hostile conditions against which they struggled, condi- 

 tions for which the stunted conifers of to-day stand as repre- 

 sentatives. 



In the closing stages of the period, a much ampler flora seems 

 to record some amelioration of the inhospitable conditions. The 

 larger part of the known American fossils belong to this stage. 

 The Richmond coal-beds of the Newark series, probably the product 

 of marsh vegetation, contain great numbers of equiseta and ferns, 

 but almost no conifers and few cycadeans. A few plant fossils 

 have been found in Mexico, Arizona, and California. 



The Land Animals 



The physical conditions of the Permian and Triassic periods 

 were so similar that adaptation to the conditions of the first would 



