10 Amazing Facts about Dinosaurs

Familiar with movie dinosaurs such as Jurassic Park and King Kong, how much do you know about dinosaurs? Here are 10 facts about dinosaurs that will surprise your friends and family.

1. Dinosaurs first appeared in the Triassic [248-213 million years ago] and were the dominant land animals from the entire Jurassic period to the end of the Cretaceous period [65 million years ago].

2. I know about dinosaurs because I found a fossil. Fossil is commonly found in sedimentary rocks containing fossilized body parts [bones, teeth, skin, nails, etc.]. , Nests, tooth marks, feces, etc.

3. The Earth's continent moves slowly through a process known as “plate tectonics”. When the dinosaur first appeared in the Triassic, all continents of the earth were joined together in one supercontinent known as "Pangea".

4. All well-known dinosaurs died at the end of the Cretaceous Period. There are various reasons why this happened, but the most popular theory today is that the asteroid hits the Earth, blocking the sunlight and not getting enough food. Proof of this theory is a layer of iridium believed to have come from an asteroid, a collision site that has been discovered all over the world and may have been discovered in southern Mexico.

5. The smallest known dinosaur was Compsognathus, which lived in Europe in the late Jurassic and was about the size of a chicken. Compsognathus is thought to have eaten insects, lizards and other small animals.

6. There are several types of dinosaurs over 100 feet [30 meters] in length, so there are quite a few candidates for the largest dinosaur. The largest was indeed a kind of sauropod [dinosaur that eats a four-legged plant with a long neck] that lived in the late Jurassic or early Cretaceous.

7. The word “dinosaur” was created by Richard Owen by founding the Natural History Museum in London, England. "Dinosaur" means a terrible lizard and is based on the Greek words "Deinos" [terrible] and "Saur" [lizard].

8. People have found dinosaur fossils for hundreds of years, but until very recently did not know what they were. William Buckland was the first scientific description of a dinosaur in 1824.

9. At the same time that dinosaurs ruled land, there were many aquatic reptiles that ruled the sea, but these were not dinosaurs. These aquatic reptiles included Plesiosaurus, Nososaurus, Mosasaurus, and Ixosaurus.

10. Birds seem to have evolved from dinosaurs, but no other flying dinosaurs are known. But in the dinosaur era there were many flying reptiles known as pterosaurs.