ExtinctZoo - What Happened When It Rained For Millions Of Years

Episode Date: November 23, 2025

A bit of rain here and there is no biggie, and actually kind of cozy. Now over a million years of rain on the other hand... then things start getting a bit crazy.

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Tasty food, drinks, sand, and of course, that's sweet, sweet sun. But when you guys arrive, the rain starts coming down hard. hard and your plans are ruined, at least temporarily. It's not to worry, you can just wait it out. But what if it keeps raining? In raining, and raining, and you guessed it, raining. And let's say for a thousand years it is nothing but dreary weather. Well, at that point I doubt you still be around, and if you were, I'd tell you to suck it up,

as 1,000 years of rain is actually a mercy compared to what took place roughly 234 million years ago, when one day it started raining and then didn't stop for nearly 2 million years. This was the Carnian Pluvial episode. As its name so nicely puts it, this bizarre event in history took place in the Carnian, one of the six stages that make up the Triassic, and the first stage of the late portion of it. In general, it's widely regarded as a fairly normal and tame stage, as far as the Triassic goes, which isn't saying a whole lot given the whole wackiness of this period. At that time, most of the world's land was still tied up into the massive supercontinent of

Pangea, which spanned over one-third of the planet's surface, while the super ocean Panthalasa and the smaller ocean, the Paleotethys, were essentially dominating the rest of the globe. In the weather and climate department, things were traumatic as usual too, meaning a whole lot of hot and arid weather that resulted in many areas being straight up sand or rocks. However, there were distinct wet seasons that you definitely couldn't miss, and I mean that literally. As the extreme land-to-sea distribution led us something called mega-monsoons, which, if you can guess, were monsoons that were absolutely supercharged, being far more intense than any monsoons around today.

So this in turn, with a general just crummy environment, meant that big swathes of the interior Pangea, which laid close to the equator, were straight up uninhabitable for the vast majority of life. And the problem with the interiors were only further exacerbated by the presence of the central Pangian mountains, which laid near the center of the massive landmass, and essentially split it into two, resulting in a clear north and south. And these mountains were not only wide, but also extremely tall, which led to them casting something called rain shadows, massive ones, resulting in some areas, somehow being used to

even drier, while they also influenced the mega monsoons, making them just a tad bit more unpredictable, which is saying something. So no doubt, this was one chaotic phase for Mother Nature, yet life still managed to do its thing, especially along the coasts and southern regions, where the climate was a bit more reasonable. And actually, life during the carnion had been able to ramp up quite a bit, with things starting to get quite interesting. Part of this has to do the fact that the Great Dying had taken place just before the Tricacic, which had been bad enough the life's recovery was still happening. So in other words, new things were always popping up. up left and right, including a group you've definitely heard of, the dinosaurs.

Yep, it wasn't this relatively unheard time that the most famous prehistoric group of animals first emerged, or at least the first unequivocal true dinosaurs did. Our knowledge about these OGs mainly stems from the Santa Maria formation, a locality that sat within Pengean in Brazil, and was composed as semi-arid lands, where sparse forests and the odd river or two rested. And if you time traveled back here, you would find within a novel type of creature, the Starricosaurus, a 2.25-m. meter or 7 foot 5 inch long herarosaur day in other words the type of dinosaur who was also by the way

among the largest dinos of the time but that's still not much as it only needed to weigh the same as a medium-sized dog in order to hold this achievement and this smaller size opposed to its later kin limited its dye to small and equally medium-sized vertebrates like synodons rancasors and various synapsids so it was certainly an oddball of a dino yet funny enough it was also the normal one in santa maria As things get a bit stranger when you take a look at the only other known dinosaur, the Brio Lestes, an even smaller dinosaur who had sharp teeth, sharp claws, and get this, two legs. So clearly a theropod, right? Uh, no, what you're looking at is actually a sarapodomorpha, which meaning that one day,

it, or its ascendance, would give rise the giant herbivorous saropods. But for now it was a little meat eater, and we know that it was not a theropod because it possessed a downturned jaw tip and a long deltopectoral crest. on the humorous, both characters' scenes and only sarapotomorphs. But visually looking at the sky, I do have to admit it's kind of a tough connection to make. And in general, nearly every dinosaurs like these guys, two-legged and small. But that being said, do not underestimate them, because they came in great numbers, kind of, as alongside them lived a large amount of non-dinosaur-dinosaur forms. In other words, the next best thing to dinosaurs,

being the closest related thing to them ever, but which didn't quite hit the mark. And some of the genera at the time included Legosuchus, Marusucas, and Saltopus, who were even smaller than their more derived kin. And if you saw them at a passing glance, you might have confused them for some strange lizard running around on its two back legs. But regardless, the presence of dinosaur morpha was indeed very exciting, and by association was great news for the archosaurs. We were also cooking up a few things besides the terrible lizards, as it was in this stage that we see some of the most iconic animals of late Triassic appear, such as things like the Ryosukians, phytosaurs, and aodosaurs, and more. You name it, and the Karnian likely had it. And when I say that,

this does extend to non-archosords as well. His other new faces included the earliest Lepidosaurs, which included the ancestor of modern-day lizards, snakes, and twoitaras. And you even had the first shiva swords and terasora morpha appear as well, which weren't actually terasors as you might imagine them, but rather they're ancestors that had somewhat terosaur-like forms, which though in many cases lacked wings, yet retained structures that were like those of their later descendants. And in the water, things were cooking up too, with some new faces including the earliest placodons, a unique, now-extinct-order marine reptiles that superficially looked like marine iguanas, or like shell turtles. And we also see Belmites appear in the Karnian as well. In order

a squid-like cephalopods, that would eventually become a major part of the marine ecosystem, all the way up to the late Cretaceous, in some cases achieving some pretty remarkable sizes. But for now, they remained kawaii size. So with this all said, evidently the Karnian as a whole was a, a spicy time for life. But this was really all just a teaser of what was to come, as in the background, things were underway that would soon have intense ramifications. Namely, along the western coast of North America, you would have found the massive Wranglia flood basalts, a type of large igneous province commonly abbreviated to LIP. Now, if you've been following me long enough, you know this only means trouble, as LIPs are well known for being chaos harbingers.

I mean, just take a look at the Permian extinction or Triassic extinction, both catastrophic events, that were due to the eruption of, guess what, LIPs. And it was around this time in the Carnian, aka 234 million years ago, that the Wrangalia flood basalt finally erupted, and they did so in brilliant fashion, spewing untold amounts of lava, as well as various gases, including one very common face in present-day world-changing events, and events overall, carbon dioxide.

Now let's just say, the Wrangalia basalt, even for its huge size, released an abnormal amount of this stuff, which flooded the ocean atmosphere system and leading to worldwide global warming, with temperatures rising as much as 4 to 8 degrees Celsius or 7 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit, making things quite to say the least. Meanwhile, the rise in CO2 likely caused an extreme acceleration of the hydrological cycle, which basically supercharged continental weathering, and it wasn't just the amount of released carbon dioxide that caused such a switchup,

but also the speed, for these eruptions, were short and sweet. ejecting this stuff, interrates, typically not seen, And to make things a little more dire, it seems that along with carbon dioxide, these volcanoes also contained atypical volumes of methane clathrates, which, without getting too sciencey, is basically something that is 86 times more powerful than CO2 when it comes to global warming potential, exacerbating things just that much more. And so when you combine all this global warming and acceleration in the hydrological cycle, one thing began to happen. Rain and rain and rain. The Kronin pluvial event had officially begun. Now, we don't know, and probably will never know, just how intense this rain was, but we can say for certain that it was coming down in unimaginable amounts,

with it having essentially been pouring dinosaurs and pseudosukians rather than cats and dogs. Yeah, it was that wild. In fact, the rain was so extreme that we even have clear evidence for its existence through certain rock formations, where the rain had eroded the sediment enough to have exposed the actual basement rock, which, just for reference, our rocks laying right above the mantle, and sit below all other sediments and rock, usually being buried miles below the surface. So yeah, a lot of rain erosion is needed to expose them. Other signs that there was a stupid amount of rain during this time

also included the widespread abundance of amber in certain paleo soils that only form when precipitation far exceeds the amount of water being evaporated. And as you know, the amount of rain was not the only ridiculous thing. It's like I mentioned, the duration was unbelievable too, saying that it lasted, you know, up to 2 million years, 2 million years of perpetual rain. Well, I will admit that perpetual might be, maybe a bit dramatic, because despite the common trope that it rained nonstop for 2 million years during this event,

it probably didn't. Instead, you would have found this time to have had much higher rates of rain than usual, with events of hyper-extreme precipitation sprinkled in. No pun intended. And the Carnium pluvial wasn't just all about rain, as in general the climate drastically switched from dry to unusually humid. Basically think the wettest, soupiest rainforest possible, transforming much of the planet into tropical lush regions, that would have given the

Carboniferous a good run for its money when it came to swampy-like vibes, with peat forests, even having been re-established in this event. And a few other things that became more common during the CPE included floodplains and marshes on massive scales, while giant inland lakes that might have dwarfed the Great Lakes of today were also present, making this world 100% philosophia certified. However, like most things, where there is a push, there is a pole, and while never-ending rain was the rule during this event, it turns out that dryness remained during the Carnian pluvial episode. On top of periodic episodes where arid conditions would partially return,

some studies have also suggested that certain areas were backstabbed by this event, becoming in fact more arid than ever before. And this included just about the driest place in history, the interiors of Pangea. As mentioned, during the early Middle Triassic, these inter realms of the continent were basically inhabitable to life, being hot enough to essentially cook a wide variety of meats, including by the way, living ones, and being so dry that massive deserts took cold. And thus, if they were really made worse by the Carnium Pluvial episode, I doubt anything could live within these extreme pockets. Yet, I digress.

In general, we're talking about over a million years of humid, relentless, rainy weather. And to some, this might sound like a cozy time, you know, like those cyberpunkish cities where it's always raining, but in reality, this event was less on the cozy spectrum and more on the world. in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition.

First Citizens Bank. World ending or changing spectrum. Because it turns out that too much rain throws things into a ray and the pluvial event is considered to be a forgotten extinction of sorts. With the changes to the environments, worldwide flooding, and global warming,

ending up in very high background rates of extinction. And actually, before this rainy event was even hypothesized, scientists were already aware that major die-offs had occurred during the Carnian. They just weren't sure why. But now they know. Now perhaps surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, while you do not feel the rain itself much underwater, it was in fact marine life that seems to have gotten battered the most.

With one hypothesis being that the pluvial event altered the oceans by reducing their carbonate platforms and thereby severely harming carbonate-forming animals, resulting in large amounts of conodonts, aminoids, and bryozoa dying out, while algae and crinoids took a massive hit as well. And on top of that, can you guess what million years of rain could do to an ocean? Which, you know, is a salty body of water? Yeah, diluted. And there's pretty good evidence that this happened, with the ocean's salinity decreasing by quite a bit, which to me or you wouldn't feel like much, but for a certain marine animals would have been literal torture, totally disrupting their homeostasis, and adding again to the higher background extinction rate. Now on the flip

side, on land, the situation was a bit less dire, but still definitely not perfect, as there were more than a few animals that had a tough time dealing with the flooding, rain, and general transformation of environments. And one of the main groups to get pelted was one I've already briefly named, the rhinocosaurs. This was a group of herbivorous crocopoda, meaning they were closer to arcasors than Lepidosaurs, and it first appeared during the early days of the Tricacic, finding great success quickly and becoming quite abundant in certain parts of pangia, sometimes in fact accounting for 40 to 60% of all specimens from a formation. And reflecting this, at the start of the Carnian, they could not have been doing any better.

Originally, they had been on the small side and had lizard-like builds, but now they'd achieve lengths up to two meters and attained more robust builds, while their faces lengthened and became more triangular. And everything seemed like it was only going to get better for them. But the Carnian pluvial vent seemingly had other ideas, and the rhinocosaurs were absolutely battered during these years, with the main idea being that they couldn't keep up with a change in forests, with their preferred vegetation becoming rare and rare. And essentially, every family died off except for one, the Hypero daepidontane, and still

not even these guys lasted much longer, disappearing the very next stage. So, uh, these guys had a pretty valid reason to hate the rain, which by the way, so did the Dyssinodons. This group needs no introduction, having given us plenty of iconic animals like the Placerias or Listerosaurus. But for a refresher's sake, this was a very diverse group of non-mammalian therapsids, that were herbivores and typically possessed tusks, thus their name, which means two dog-toothed. Now, unlike many of the others I've named so far, these guys had actually been around

since the Permian, and like the rhinocores, have been doing just fine. But for similar reasons, found themselves struggling during the pluvial vent, and many of the living groups of the time wound up going extinct. Yet they would end up fearing a tad bit better than the rhinocosaurus, persisting a tad bit longer, given their greater diversity. But nevertheless, they too still disappeared, going extinct around 211 million years ago. But with that said, what's very odd about the Carnian pluvial vent is that while background extinction rates were abnormally high at this time, I dare say that more animals and organisms have it to think. As many walks of life actually received quote-unquote power-ups because of it,

including, of course, the biggest rain lovers out there, plants and trees. As the lands took a step back from the arid paradigm, flora unsurprisingly began a strong comeback, with forests and swamps sprouting all over the world. And it was during this time that ferns, conifers, and the Benisititalians heavily diversified, leading to them becoming the mainstays in Mesozoic flora. And the level up seen in forests, as well as the rise of in the lakes and lush environments,

ultimately had a beneficial impact in various creatures, including, by the way, the future mighty rulers of Earth. The dinosaurs. Yep, as it so turns out, it might have been this rainy event that was an essential step in their development, with their diversity, diversification rate, and size greatly increasing after the CPE. And actually, the overall abundance of dinosaurs also ticked upwards during the Carnium pluvial event.

and formations go from yielding a couple dinosaur genera to sometimes nearly 10. And perhaps the best example for this is the Iscoagalsto formation out of Argentina, which had at least eight different kinds of dinosaurs living within it, including multiple saripotomorphs and heresaurus. Amongst them, you would have even found the heresaurus itself, which was one of the largest predatory dinosaurs to have lived throughout the entire Triassic, with specimens growing up to six meters or 20 feet long, and possessing large serrated teeth,

allowing them to hunt a large range of vertebrates they lived alongside, while also becoming one of the more common carnivores in this specific ecosystem, with over 50 different specimens having been recovered. Other specific genera included the likes of Eoraptor, Eodromaeus, Antevis, Panfagia, and San Juan Soros, who was itself, by the way, not much smaller than the herarasaurus. Additionally, it's only after this event that we see the rise of the first giant dinosaurs, as it's during the Norian, some 228 million years ago, that we get the evolution of Leshamosaurus, one of the largest Triassic dinosaurs of all time,

being a sarapod that measured 12 meters or 39 feet long, and weighed possibly up to 10 metric tons, near the record weight of an African elephant. So not much compared to the Jurassic and Cretaceous saropods, but impressive nonetheless. However, having said this, you must remember that the Triassic was not the dinosaurs' heyday. There were other more prominent groups about, who also got their own power-ups after the CPE. And this largely involved the aeotosaurus, who became one of the most dominant animals on land, and were archosaurs more related to crocodiles than birds and dinosaurs. It's easy to call this group a odd bunch, as on the surface they looked like armored medium

to large-sized crock-like creatures, yet they were terrestrial and usually herbivorous or at the most omnivorous, not predatorial. And it seems they vastly benefited from the new forest which emerged, being able to better specialize in conifers and ferns compared to previous orders like the rhinocosaurs. As another huge winner in all of this, happened to be a somewhat close relative of the aotosaurus, albeit a tad more bloodthirsty, and that was the semi-aquatic phytosaurs. It's not hard to imagine why a group of semi-aquatic carnivores would do well after, well, a lot of rain, with the rise of swamps and giant mega lakes being the phytosaurs equivalent

of taking a huge whiff of smelling salts. And very rapidly, they diversified, increasing their range and ballooning in size, getting essentially large enough that they could take on just about anything, meaning that even Sarapodon of certain sizes had to be on edge when ever taking a sip of fresh water and honestly giving me just one more reason why to stay away from giant pitless lakes and while not to the same degree it seems that turtles and crocodilomorphs made some headway as well further diversifying so who knows maybe we have a 234 million year old rainstorm to thank for crocs and turtles today of course though i can't talk about a triassic event without actually mentioning how the true terrestrial

rulers as far as predators go fared which would be by the way the rauwisukians a diverse group of usually quadrupedal, terrifying archosaurs that had wicked jaws, armor, and bad tempers. They had already established themselves the dominant predators at this point, and were found virtually worldwide, while also nearly always being an apex predator within their respective ecosystems. However, despite their power level, they, like all animals, were impacted by the CPE, but what kind of changes the pluvial event incurred on them is a bit more ambiguous, as there is debate on the extent of its influence, with some stating that even if it hadn't occurred, not much would change in the Raui-Sukian's timeline, which obviously is a timeline that ends

with extinction. Although, with this said, there are a few interesting things which have been observed in this group and the timing of the event. For starters, while the Rawi-Sukians have been fairly diverse throughout much of the late Triassic, a good chunk of genera only pop up during the Karnian, and more specifically, around or directly after the eternal rainstorm. On top of that, while they also were always quite sizey, there does seem to be an increase in body stature only following the rain. This could have been sheer coincidence, of course, yet interesting regardless, and was sour news for all non-Rawisukian life. As it's around this time that we start to see genera like the Sarasukas, a massive unit of a member that it was 23 feet or 7 meters long and weighed about half a ton. While the even bigger, the Solosucas also only appears following the Carnian, albeit much later on.

And even though it may be that these changes were unlinked to the Carnian's pluvial episode, I think it's fair to say that 2 million years of rain still had a rather large impact on the Carnian. planet and changed its course forever, which thus only leaves one more question, which is, what happened afterwards? What's the conclusion? Well, eventually like all things, the volcano stopped erupting and the rain slowly subsided, leading to a resume in the air, dry, and hot conditions that we know of so well. However, while things in some ways return to normal, the impacts of the carni and pluvial event were lasting, as changes undergone by animals because of it, would ultimately lead to certain results seen down the road, either directly or, or,

indirectly. So the next time it rains, I want you to remember this video and thank it for giving us crocodiles and turtles. Maybe. Thanks for watching and until next time. On Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. It's on sale now at Yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. U.N. must be 21 to enter.

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