In a broad way the Mesozoic era corresponds with the Golden Age of
reptiles, and with the climax of the Conifer and Cycad flora, which was
established in the Permian. But among the Conifers and Cycads our modern
flowering plants were beginning to show face tentatively, just like
birds and mammals among the great reptiles.
In the _Triassic_ period the exuberance of reptilian life which marked
the Permian was continued. Besides Turtles which still persist, there
were Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Dinosaurs, and Pterosaurs, none of which
lasted beyond the Mesozoic era. Of great importance was the rise of the
Dinosaurs in the Triassic, for it is highly probable that within the
limits of this vigorous and plastic stock--some of them bipeds--we must
look for the ancestors of both birds and mammals. Both land and water
were dominated by reptiles, some of which attained to gigantic size. Had
there been any zoologist in those days, he would have been very
sagacious indeed if he had suspected that reptiles did not represent the
climax of creation.