DINOSAURS
Introduction Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for over 160 million years, from the Triassic period around 230 million years ago through the Jurassic period and until the end of the Cretaceous period around 65 million years ago. The word dinosaur comes from the Greek language and means 'terrible lizard'. The first dinosaur to be formally named was the Megalosaurus ,back in 1824. A person who studies dinosaurs is known as a Palaeontologist. Rather than being carnivores, the largest dinosaurs such as the Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus were actually herbivores.
Types of Dinosaurs There were 700 species of dinosaurs during the era and the most famous being Tyrannosaurs, Sauropods, Ceratopsians ,Raptors, Theropods and others. Pterodactyls are not dinosaurs, they were flying reptiles that lived during the age of dinosaurs but they do not fall into the same category. The same goes for water based reptiles such as Plesiosaurs.
Mesozoic era The Mesozoic Era lasted about 180 million years, and is divided into the three periods, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. During the Mesozoic era, the Earth was very different than it is now. The climate was warmer, the seasons were very mild, the sea level was higher, and there was no polar ice Even the shape of the continents on Earth was different; the continents were joined together at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era, forming the supercontinent of Pangaea, but would start breaking apart toward the middle of the Mesozoic Era.
Fossilisation A dinosaur dies and is buried before the remains are completely destroyed. Over time, layers of sediment(a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of build up and press down on the buried remains). Dissolved minerals, transported by ground-waters in the sediment, fill tiny spaces in the bones.
Food Some dinosaurs hunted other dinosaurs or ate dead animals. Most dinosaurs, however, ate plants. Rocks that contains dinosaur bones also contain fossil pollen that indicate hundreds to thousands of types of plants existed during the Mesozoic Era. The last of the dinosaurs certainly had fruit available to eat.
Fun facts Meat-eating dinosaurs are known as Theropods, which means “beast-footed,” because they had sharp, hooked claws on their toes. Dinosaurs lived on all the continents, including Antarctica. Some of the biggest plant eaters had to eat as much as a ton of food a day. This is similar to eating a bus-sized pile of fruits and vegetables every day.
Dinosaur extinction Having existed for 165 million years, why did dinosaurs die out? There are many different theories about why this happened. We will probably never know exactly what happened, which means that scientists will continue to disagree and come up with different dinosaur extinction theories. Here are some of them: Asteroid Impact: A massive asteroid hit the earth at Chixulub on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico about 65 million years. It was so big that all the plants were destroyed and the dinosaur couldn’t eat anything. Ice age: Now and again, the earth cools into periods we call ice ages. As dinosaurs were thought to be cold blooded, it would have been hard for them to cope with such cold conditions.
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Thanks for watching! Here are the websites I used to research: http://www.kids-dinosaurs.com/dinosaur-extinction.html http://www.kids-dinosaurs.com/dinosaur-facts.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dinosaur_genera