The Mesozoic is one of four (sometimes more) geologic eras. The division of time into Eras dates back to the 19th century.
The Mesozoic includes three Geologic Periods; from oldest to youngest, the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. It extended from roughly 245 million years before present to roughly 64 million years. It followed the Paleozoic Era and preceded the Cenozoic Era.
The Mesozoic covers the time when life was dominated by large sophisticated reptiles. The lower (oldest) boundary is set by the Permian extinction. The upper (youngest) boundary is set at the Cretaceous extinction.
Geologically, the Mesozoic starts with almost all the Earth's land collected into a supercontinent called Pangaea. During the Era, Pangaea split into the northern continent Laurasia and the southern continent Gondwana. Laurasia then split into North America and Eurasia. Gondwana broke up progressively into four continents: South America, Africa, Australia and Antarctica.
The Mesozoic is known as the Age of Dinosaurs. It also saw the development of early birds and mammals, and of flowering plants (angiosperms). At the end of the Mesozoic, all the major body plans of modern life were in place although in some cases—notably the mammals—the forms that existed at the end of the Cretaceous were relatively primitive.
MesozoicEra, major division of the Phanerozoic Eon of the geological timescale, following the Palaeozoic Era and preceding the CenozoicEra.
In the early Mesozoic the continents were joined together in a single land mass called Pangaea, which had a dominant effect on climate—it was a time of widespread aridity in the continental interior.
The late Mesozoic was the dinosaur’s zenith; much of their diversity is traced to the rise of the flowering plants (angiosperms) and new groups of herbivorous dinosaurs that evolved alongside them.
Eras encompass major intervals of Time and are defined based on the fossil life-forms found in the rock layers, and the Law of Superposition.
The MesozoicEra was important for the fossil remains of the dinosaurs and other reptiles that lived.
However, the MesozoicEra landscape was also occupied by insects, early mammals, plants such as conifers and ferns, fish, and finally flowering plants and early birds.
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