Rain drives the dinosaur radiation
Dinosaur diversity jumps immediately after the Carnian rains — the climate shift that gave them their opening.
- When
- Known to
- ± 2 million years
- Era
- Triassic, Mesozoic
Dinosaur footprints and body fossils increase markedly in the aftermath of the Carnian Pluvial Episode, as the vegetation changes and rival groups decline. The correlation is tight enough that the episode is now widely regarded as the trigger for the dinosaurs' rise from bit part to main cast. They still do not dominate — that requires a second, larger catastrophe thirty million years later.