Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Jurassic lasted about 58.3 million years, spanning from the end of the Triassic around 201.4 million years ago to the beginning of the Cretaceous about 143.1 million years ago. It is the second and middle period of the Mesozoic Era and the eighth period of the Phanerozoic Eon.
The Jurassic is named after the Jura Mountains, a forested range along the France-Switzerland border where limestone strata from the period were first identified. Alexander von Humboldt named the deposits Jura-Kalkstein in 1799, and Alexandre Brongniart coined the term Jurassic in 1829.
The Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary is the only system boundary in the geological record to lack a defined Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point. Most biostratigraphic markers there are strongly regional, and there are no chemostratigraphic events such as isotope excursions to define or correlate the boundary.
The Jurassic climate was generally warmer than today, by around 5 to 10 degrees, with atmospheric carbon dioxide likely about four times higher and no ice caps. Forests grew near the poles with warm summers and cold winters, while deserts and scrubland spread across the lower latitudes.
The Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, also called the Jenkyns Event, was an episode of widespread oceanic anoxia around 183 million years ago. It featured black shale deposition, ocean acidification, and a collapse of carbonate-producing organisms, hitting brachiopods especially hard, and is often attributed to the eruption of the Karoo-Ferrar large igneous provinces.
Dinosaurs became the dominant land vertebrates during the Early Jurassic, with sauropods becoming the largest organisms ever to live on land. The oceans held marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, while pterosaurs were the dominant flying vertebrates and the first stem-group birds, including Archaeopteryx, appeared.
Pangaea was the supercontinent that began breaking apart during the Early Jurassic into the northern supercontinent Laurasia and the southern supercontinent Gondwana. The rifting between North America and Africa initiated first, associated with the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province.