Monday, December 5, 2011

Significant Things About Prehistoric Reptiles

By Anthony Starks


We all watched dinosaurs from movies such as Jurassic Car park and King Kong, but how much do you really find out about dinosaur games for kids? Listed below are some interesting facts about dinosaurs which you'll amaze your friends and family with:

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

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

People have been locating dinosaur fossils for hundreds of years, nevertheless didn't know what they were until quite just lately. The first time that a dinosaur has been scientifically described is at 1824, by William Buckland.

The global continents slowly undertake a process known as "plate tectonics". Any time dinosaurs first appeared through 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 the particular Cretaceous period. There are many different hypotheses why this may get happened, but today the most famous theory is that the asteriod hit the earth, preventing the sunlight so that there is not enough food obtainable. Evidence for this idea is a layer regarding iridium, which is believed to attended from the asteroid, has been found around the globe, and a possible influence site found in southern Mexico.

The smallest identified dinosaur is Compsognathus, which were living in Europe throughout the late Jurassic, and was ready the size of a hen. Compsognathus is believed to have consumed insects, lizards and other little animals.

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

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

Dinosaurs first appeared throughout the Triassic period (248 to 213 million years ago), and were the dominant land animals through the entire Jurassic time period, and to the end in the Cretaceous period (65 million years ago).

We know with regards to dinosaurs because fossils have been discovered. The fossils, which can be found in sedimentary rocks, which includes fossilized body parts (bones, the teeth, skin, claws, and so on.), as well as trace fossils ("ichnofossils") which show how the animals lived, that include footprints, burrows, nests, toothmarks, dung, etc.




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