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The Cenozoic is just as much the age of savannas, the age of co-dependent flowering plants and insects, and the age of birds. [40] Grasses also played a very important role in this era, shaping the evolution of the birds and mammals that fed on them. One group that diversified significantly in the Cenozoic as well were the snakes.
Major extinctions in terrestrial vertebrates and large amphibians. Earliest examples of armoured dinosaurs. 195 Ma First pterosaurs with specialized feeding (Dorygnathus). First sauropod dinosaurs. Diversification in small, ornithischian dinosaurs: heterodontosaurids, fabrosaurids, and scelidosaurids. 190 Ma Pliosauroids appear in the fossil ...
Since the 19th century, a significant amount of research has been conducted on the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, the mass extinction that ended the dinosaur-dominated Mesozoic Era and set the stage for the Age of Mammals, or Cenozoic Era. A chronology of this research is presented here.
c. 66.038 ± 0.011 Ma – Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period marks the end of the Mesozoic era and the age of the dinosaurs; start of the Paleogene Period and the current Cenozoic era.
It marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and with it the Mesozoic era, while heralding the beginning of the current era, the Cenozoic. In the geologic record , the K–Pg event is marked by a thin layer of sediment called the K–Pg boundary, Fatkito boundary or K–T boundary , which can be found throughout the world in marine and ...
Above the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, which has been dated to 66.038 ± 0.025 million years ago, [272] fossils of non-avian dinosaurs disappear abruptly; the absence of dinosaur fossils was historically used to assign rocks to the ensuing Cenozoic.
During the early Cenozoic, after the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs, mammals underwent an evolutionary diversification, and some bird groups around the world developed a tendency towards gigantism; this included the Gastornithidae, the Dromornithidae, the Palaeognathae, and the Phorusrhacidae. [36]
Later into the period, it began to withdraw and the coastal plains of the western states were home to dinosaurs like Edmontosaurus, Triceratops, and Tyrannosaurus. Another mass extinction ended the reign of the dinosaurs. The Cenozoic Era began afterward. The inland sea of the Cretaceous gradually vanished and mammals were beginning to dominate ...