| Adaptation | a change in organisms in response to a change in the environment |
| Amphibian | an organism capable of living both on land and in water |
| Archosaurs | group of reptiles that gave rise to the dinosaurs |
| Conifers | cone-bearing plants (e.g., pines) |
| Cynodonts | mammal-like reptiles (Triassic) |
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Ecological niche |
the place an organism occupies in an ecology, both an area and a lifestyle |
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Gymnosperm |
conifers are gymnosperms because their seeds are unprotected, that is, they have no covering |
| Herbivore | ananimal that eats plants (the large sauropods were herbivores) |
| Lithosphere | the outermost rocky sphere of the earth's mantle; the rigid portion that supports the continental and oceanic crust of the planet; a rocky outer shell that is divided into the tectonic plates |
| Omnivore | an animal that eats both plants and animals |
| Orogeny | a mountain-building episode |
| Pangaea | the supercontinent or "all land" that existed between 300-200 mya |
| Plate Tectonics | the tectonic interactions of the moving lithospheric plates |
| Saurischia | one of the two orders of dinosaurs classified by their hip structure. Saurischian dinosaurs includes the herbivorous sauropods and the carnivorous theropods |
| Sauropods | a dinosaur suborder of long-necked herbivores |
| Theropods | a suborder of saurischian dinosaurs that included the bipedal (walking on two legs) carnivores; this suborder is divided into the carnosaurs and the coelurosaurs |
