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Climate in Pangea
Topic Started: Dec 16 2010, 11:12 AM (1,723 Views)
BaliTiger23
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I'm wondering if anyone has any information on what the climate was back in Pangea? I have read about hot central deserts, but really that's all I can find. And trust me, it's not for lack of searching. My Google-fu is just not strong on this topic I guess.
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

For most of its existence, the areas near the sea were lush swamp forest.
I can't find much either, but i think there were large rivers coming from mountains inland.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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BaliTiger23
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Swamp forest as in mangroves?
Also, source for the rivers?
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Holben
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Rivers from mountains i believe.

In the forests, we had:
lycophytes
cycads
gingkoes
(and in the north,) conifers.

WIkipedia said the most common plant was a seed fern, Glossopteris.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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BaliTiger23
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I spend too much time on 4chan apparently. I meant source as in, where did you get the information? :P

So lots of sporophytes then. Makes sense if it were hot and humid.
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Holben
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Wikipedia, articles on Triassic and Pangaea. :P

Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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BaliTiger23
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Didn't even think to look in the actual time lines... I'm slow sometimes.

Triassic... hot and dry, no glaciation at the poles instead being moist and temperate, highly seasonal continental climate with very hot summers and cold winters, and cross-continental monsoons.

Now, the question is, is that easily applicable to Pangaea Ultima?
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MitchBeard
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BaliTiger23
Dec 16 2010, 11:29 AM
So lots of sporophytes then. Makes sense if it were hot and humid.
Look outside. Can you see any plants at all?
If you can, then I can guarantee that most, if not all, sporophytes. Unless all you can see is moss, liverwort or hornwort (these being the only vascular plants where the gametophyte is dominant)
A sporophyte is part of the lifecycle of all plants. They alternate between this diploid sporophyte and a haploid gametophyte.
Sporophyte isn't a taxonomic ranking.

It also makes a lot of sense that it was only lycophytes, seed ferns, cycads, ginkoes and conifers because flowering plants hadn't evolved yet.

Most of it would probably be applicable to Pangea Ultima.
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BaliTiger23
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Heh, and people wonder why y'all make me feel unintelligent. I don't know plants, and yeah... I thought it meant spore-bearing plants, such as fungus and such...

And that's a good point about flowering plants not having been evolved yet... I am totally slow for not considering that.

So now that I know my climate, the next step would be figuring out the flora, seeing as how I am apparently more than clueless haha.
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Ook
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u want to use it for your project?
i can imagine some more developed graminoids and other flowering plants as dominant flora
maybe some conifers could exist too,i doubt that cycads will be still here

BTW fungus is not a plant
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BaliTiger23
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Yeah, I figured looking at past and present supercontinents would help me with my future one. Pangaea is the closest to Pangaea Ultima out of all of them, so I figured it would be a good start.

As for plants, yes, definitely lots of grass. Lots and lots haha. Sorry for my ignorance on the matter, but would flowering plants include most trees? Other than conifers, of course. Like, broadleafs?
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Ook
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might help
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiosperms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinophyta

BTW you can create the landscape little different,with different tree analogues,from plants like banana,or even the flowers like..dandelions,i hope you know what i mean

imagine landscape with bamboo like giant grasses,fast growing giant bananas,or giant mulleins
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BaliTiger23
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Lol I was reading those two pages already, but thank you.

And yes, I understand what you mean :) Currently I'm just trying to figure out what sorts of plant-types could survive in my world, and then I can use those as a basis for what my spec ev plants would evolve into. Sort of use them as a parallel. I can't think of the exact word I'm looking for here... but hopefully you get the gist?
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MitchBeard
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Sorry Slivovica, but why would cycads be extinct?
They're still around today you know. Very widespread and rather dominant in a couple of ecosystems around the place.
They're pretty drought tolerant, and very salt tolerant.
They've survived this long, and I don't really see them going extinct any time soon.
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BaliTiger23
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Upon looking cycad's up, I am inclined to agree with Mitchbeard. They're pretty darned versatile, wow.
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