Prehistoric Wild: Life in the Mesozoic

Home Sweet Nest (184 MYA)

Hanson Formation, Antarctica, 184 million years ago

In our modern day, the continent of Antarctica is one of, if not the, harshest, coldest parts of the globe. One that is primarily made up of and completely covered in miles of ice. A place that is inhospitable to all but a handful of organisms.

But here in the Early Jurassic, it is a much different world. The continent is positioned further north than it will be over 180 million years later. It lies in the middle of the Gondwanan supercontinent, joined together with modern-day Africa, Australia, South America, and India.

The land here is not one of blanketing white, but one of many lush greens. Instead of the frigid below-zero cold, temperatures are much warmer at around 60 degrees fahrenheit. Even if Antarctica were still at the bottom of the world little about this environment would change. With how much warmer the Earth of the Early Jurassic is, the ice caps have yet to take form.

In these sub-tropical lands, not a single sign of frost is found, a stark contrast to what the continent would be in our current day. Unlike in modern Antarctica, a canopy of cypress, araucaria, and conifer trees rises in from the ground, shielding much of it from the mid-morning sun. The forest floor is teeming with cycads and horsetails. Surrounding them is a massive variety of ferns, including umbrella, seed, comb, and large manferns. Underneath them is moist dirt almost entirely crowned with moss and fungi. Quillworts are also seen in small streams of clear blue water that leak through this wooded land. All this vegetation is decorated with drops of dew.

A world of such vibrant greenery guarantees the presence of a type of animal to take advantage of: herbivores. The primary plant eaters in the sun-dappled forest are dozens of Glacialisaurus. They are members of the prosauropod family, a group of dinosaurs ancestral to the long-necked sauropods. Although their more famous descendants have already started appearing around this time, these forerunners of the Jurassic titans still linger as among the last of their lineage.

In appearance, they differ greatly from the likes of Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus. At up to 20 feet in length and five feet in hip height, they are much smaller than even the most diminutive of their more famous brethren. Rather than walking on all fours, they are instead bipedal. Two powerful hind legs hold their bodies off the ground while a lengthy, muscular tail helps to balance them out. Their forelimbs are much shorter yet still robust, ending in grasping hands with large, curved claws. Such appendages serve them well in foraging through the vast vegetation.

Their necks are moderately long though less proportionately than many true sauropods. Even so, they still effectively support their heads which are elongated with a flattened snout. Two large eyes set on the sides above a mouth full of leaf-shaped teeth perfect for shredding fibrous plant material. Their scaly skin is primarily cadmium green with vertical, sepia-brown streaks and a lighter tea-green underbelly.

In their feasting, the Glacialisaurus add to the forest ambiance with the crunching and snapping of shredded plant matter. They also make various grunts, snorts and low-frequency rumbles. Some among them regularly peer their heads in the air, watching out for predators.

A few other natural sounds are present here. Much of it comes from rush water flowing through the streams and nearby waterfalls. There are no birds to be heard as they have yet to evolve. In their place, insects provide the majority of animal-made sounds. The wings of damselflies, wasps, cockroaches, beetles, and other flies fill the air with buzzing, droning, and whirring. Crickets littering the ground and trees add their signature chirps to the forest ambiance. Although generally more silent, millipedes inadvertently produce rustling sounds as they move through the underbrush.