Monday, November 21, 2011

Significant Things About Prehistoric Reptiles

By Anthony Starks


We all watched dinosaurs coming from movies such as Jurassic Recreation area and King Kong, but exactly how much do you really find out about dinosaur games for kids? Listed here are some interesting facts about dinosaurs that you can amaze your friends and family using:

There are several candidates for the largest dinosaur, as there are several types of dinosaur that have been over 100 ft (30 metres) long. The largest was certainly some kind of sauropod (the four-legged plant-eating dinosaur with a long throat) that lived during the late Jurassic or early Cretaceous period.

The word "dinosaur" was coined by Friend Richard Owen, who also founded the Natural History Museum in London, England. "Dinosaur" implies terrible lizard, and is based on the Greek words "deinos" (terrible) and "sauros" (reptile).

People have been finding dinosaur fossils for hundreds of years, yet didn't know what they were until quite not too long ago. The first time that a dinosaur was scientifically described what food was in 1824, by William Buckland.

The earth's continents slowly undergo a process known as "plate tectonics". When dinosaurs first appeared in the Triassic period, all the global continents were gathered in one super-continent known as "Pangea".

Every one of the familiar types of dinosaurs, passed on off at the end of your Cretaceous period. There are many different ideas why this may have happened, but today the most famous theory is that a great asteriod hit the earth, preventing the sunlight so that there was not enough food obtainable. Evidence for this principle is a layer associated with iridium, which is believed to have come from the asteroid, has been found around the globe, and a possible impact site found in southeast Mexico.

The smallest identified dinosaur is Compsognathus, which resided in Europe throughout the late Jurassic, and concerned the size of a fowl. Compsognathus is believed to have consumed insects, lizards and other little animals.

At the same time that dinosaurs dominated the land, there were several aquatic reptiles in which dominated the oceans, although these were not really dinosaur names. These aquatic lizards included plesiosaurs, nothosaurs, mosasaurs and ichythosaurs.

Although birds seem to have started out dinosaurs, no non-avian flying dinosaurs are known. However, before dinosaurs there were many soaring reptiles, known as pterosaurs.

Dinosaurs first appeared throughout the Triassic period (248 to 213 million years ago), and ended up the dominant territory animals through the entire Jurassic interval, and to the end from the Cretaceous period (65 million years ago).

We know regarding dinosaurs because fossils have been discovered. The fossils, which are generally found in sedimentary rocks, such as fossilized body parts (bones, the teeth, skin, claws, and many others.), as well as trace past ("ichnofossils") which show what sort of animals lived, such as footprints, burrows, nests, toothmarks, dung, etc.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment