Question 1

How do you say Tithonian?

Accepted Answer

Tithonian is pronounced tih-THOH-nee-un. Break it into four parts: tih, THOH, nee, and un. The stress falls on the second syllable, THOH, so you say it with a little extra emphasis there. Once you get the rhythm, it flows pretty naturally and sounds very impressive when you say it out loud.

Question 2

What does Tithonian mean?

Accepted Answer

The Tithonian Age is named after Tithonus, a character from ancient Greek mythology. Tithonus was a Trojan prince who was granted immortality by the gods but unfortunately kept aging forever because the goddess who loved him forgot to ask for eternal youth as well. French geologist Albert Oppel chose this mythological name in 1865 when he formally defined the stage. The suffix '-ian' is a standard geological suffix meaning 'belonging to this age.'

Question 3

When was the Tithonian Age?

Accepted Answer

The Tithonian Age lasted from approximately 149.2 million years ago to 143.1 million years ago. That means it spans a window of roughly 6 million years. It sits at the very end of the Jurassic Period, right before the start of the Cretaceous Period. In geological terms, it is called a 'stage' or 'age,' and it follows the Kimmeridgian and is followed by the Berriasian.

Question 4

What dinosaurs lived in the Tithonian?

Accepted Answer

Some of the most famous dinosaurs in history lived during the Tithonian Age. In North America, the Morrison Formation preserves Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, and the powerful predator Allosaurus, all from this time. In Europe, the Solnhofen limestones of Germany preserve Archaeopteryx, the feathered creature that connects dinosaurs to birds. It was one of the richest periods for giant sauropod dinosaurs in particular.

Question 5

Is the Tithonian the end of the Jurassic?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the Tithonian is the very last age of the Jurassic Period. After the Tithonian ends, the Cretaceous Period begins with the Berriasian Age. The boundary between the Jurassic and Cretaceous, which falls at the end of the Tithonian, is placed at approximately 143.1 million years ago. Unlike the famous end of the Cretaceous, the transition out of the Tithonian was not marked by a major mass extinction event.

Question 6

What was Earth like during the Tithonian?

Accepted Answer

During the Tithonian, Earth was significantly warmer than it is today, with no polar ice caps and much higher sea levels. Warm shallow seas covered parts of what are now continents, and lush fern and conifer forests blanketed the land. The supercontinent Pangaea had already started breaking apart, so the continents looked quite different from a modern map. The atmosphere contained higher levels of carbon dioxide, which drove the warm greenhouse climate.

Question 7

What is the Morrison Formation and why is it connected to the Tithonian?

Accepted Answer

The Morrison Formation is a famous sequence of rock layers spread across the western United States, covering states like Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. Much of it was deposited during the Tithonian Age, between roughly 150 and 148 million years ago. It is one of the richest dinosaur fossil deposits in the world, producing skeletons of giants like Brachiosaurus, Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, and Allosaurus. Paleontologists have been excavating Morrison Formation fossils since the 1870s.

Question 8

Why is Archaeopteryx important to the Tithonian?

Accepted Answer

Archaeopteryx is considered one of the most scientifically important fossils ever discovered, and it comes from Tithonian-age rocks in the Solnhofen Limestone of Bavaria, Germany. This crow-sized creature had feathers like a bird but also had dinosaur features including teeth, a bony tail, and clawed wings. It provides direct physical evidence that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs. The first Archaeopteryx fossil was discovered in 1861, just two years after Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, making it a landmark find in the history of science.

Question 9

What came before and after the Tithonian?

Accepted Answer

The Tithonian is preceded by the Kimmeridgian Age and followed by the Berriasian Age. The Kimmeridgian is also part of the Late Jurassic Epoch, while the Berriasian is the first age of the Cretaceous Period. So the Tithonian is essentially the final chapter of the Jurassic before everything transitions into the very different world of the Cretaceous. All three ages are defined using ammonite fossils as the primary reference markers.

Question 10

Who named the Tithonian Age?

Accepted Answer

The Tithonian Age was named by Albert Oppel, a French-German geologist, in 1865. Oppel was a pioneer in the science of using fossil ammonites to define and correlate geological time intervals across different parts of the world. He named several Jurassic stages and was highly influential in building the framework of the Jurassic timescale that scientists still use today. Oppel tragically died young in 1865, the same year he published his work on the Tithonian, at just 34 years old.

Question 11

How do geologists know where the Tithonian starts and ends?

Accepted Answer

Geologists define the boundaries of the Tithonian using specific ammonite species that appear and disappear in the rock record. Ammonites evolved rapidly and spread widely across ancient oceans, so their fossils act like precise timestamps in rock layers around the world. The official lower boundary of the Tithonian is marked by the first appearance of specific ammonite species in rock sequences. The exact ages in millions of years are pinned down using radiometric dating of volcanic ash layers found within or near the ammonite-bearing rocks.

Question 12

Could humans and Tithonian dinosaurs ever have met?

Accepted Answer

No, not even close. The Tithonian ended about 143 million years ago, and modern humans only appeared roughly 300,000 years ago. That means the Tithonian finished approximately 142.7 million years before our species existed. Even our earliest primate ancestors were nowhere near evolving yet. The small mammals that lived during the Tithonian were distant relatives of ours, but they looked more like tiny shrews than anything recognizably human.

Question 13

What is the Solnhofen Limestone and why do paleontologists love it?

Accepted Answer

The Solnhofen Limestone is a famous geological formation in Bavaria, southern Germany, that was deposited during the Tithonian Age in a shallow tropical lagoon environment. Paleontologists love it because the extremely fine-grained limestone preserves fossils in extraordinary detail, sometimes including soft tissues like feathers, skin impressions, and even stomach contents. Archaeopteryx is the most famous fossil found there, but the formation also preserves insects, fish, pterosaurs, small dinosaurs, jellyfish, and horseshoe crabs. The same fine limestone was historically used in a printing technique called lithography.

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