History
About 200 million years ago (during the Triassic and Jurassic periods), the landscape was dominated by conifers, which were the most diverse group of trees and constituted the greatest majority of large trees. When flowering plants emerged (in the following Cretaceous period), they quickly prevailed, causing most conifers to become extinct, and those that survived to adapt to harsh conditions. Perhaps the most significant difference in this change is that the primitive conifers invested their energy in the basic food supply for every seed, with no certainty of fertilization; by contrast, flowering plants create the food supply for a seed only after it is triggered by fertilization. The Pacific temperate rain forest now remains the only region on Earth of noteworthy size and significance where, due to unique climatic conditions, the conifers flourish as they did before being displaced by flowering plants (Davis 2000).
The northern Pacific temperate rain forests are relatively young, emerging in the past few thousand years following the retreat of the ice sheets of the last ice age (Davis 2000).
Read more about this topic: Pacific Temperate Rain Forest (WWF Ecoregion)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... all big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)