Were dinosaurs smart? What was the biggest dinosaur? How did they turn into fossils? How did they go extinct? All are questions that not all people know. Dinosaurs were once the rulers of the planet. They were the only things on earth at the time. They were the top, middle, and bottom of the food chain. This paper will help you discover the answers to those questions. The most intelligent dinosaur was the velociraptor. It had a large space for it's brain. The velociraptor was only about 3 feet tall and 5 feet long. This dinosaur only weighed about 25 pounds. The velociraptor walked on two legs, therefore, it was known as a bipedal dinosaur. (DinosaurDaysTM, 1) The velociraptor was also one of the fastest dinosaurs. Velociraptor's meaning is “speedy thief”. It ran as fast as 40 mph. The …show more content…
The asteroid was approximately 6 miles across and it caused a lot of changes that affected the dinosaurs. Some of these were temperature changes, acid rain, air borne debris, regional wildfires, and months or even years of darkness. The resulting plume of the debris from the asteroid impact could have caused the sun to become temporarily blocked. Therefore, this could have caused the plants to die, causing the herbivores that ate them to die, resulting in the carnivores also dying. (J. David Archibald, 1034) Volcanic activity and climate changes are also probable theories. Large volcano eruptions would have caused massive areas to be covered in ash and lava disrupting the food and water supply. Volcanic activity could have also caused long term habitat changes resulting from the lava that flowed over the area. (J. David Archibald, 1030) Climate changes also could have contributed to extinction. The temperature could have gotten too hot or too cold, and the land could have gotten to wet or too dry for them to live. (J. David Archibald,
Pachycephalosaurians, thick-skulled dinosaurs such as the Stegoceras and the Pachycephalosaurus. (1) Ceratopsians and Pachycephalosaurs are closely related in their characteristics. Ceratopsians processed a saddle-shaped boney frill that extended from the skull to the neck and typically had horns over the nose and eyes. The most popular was the triceratops, which could reach over 26 feet and weigh in excess of twelve metric tons. Their frills served two major functions.
The biggest mass extinction of the past 600 million years (My), the end-Permian event (251 My ago), witnessed the loss of as much as 95% of all species on Earth. Key questions for biologists concern what combination of environmental changes could possibly have had such a devastating effect, the scale and pattern of species loss, and the nature of the recovery. New studies on dating the event, contemporary volcanic activity, and the anatomy of the environmental crisis have changed our perspectives dramatically in the past five years. Evidence on causation is equivocal, with support for either an asteroid impact or mass volcanism, but the latter seems most probable.
We use dinosaurs to represent the changes in nature that have occurred throughout time. Studies found that although the “oldest rock did not show evidence of life, the progression of plant and animal life that changed in recognizable intervals, from ancient life, age of reptiles to the age of mammals” (Dino Nature Metaphor, slide 6), measured the age of the earth. When we think of dinosaurs in relation to nature, we think of that very powerful force that controls the cycle of life. Nature was able to yield such magnificent ferocious creatures that walked the earth and then take them back when they served nature’s purpose. Dinosaurs fit perfectly in nature’s constant
1/4 of an inch,and smaller, to almost 3 feet long. Trilobites were also the first creatures to
Until recently, scientists believed the chances of finding a fossilized dinosaur heart were extremely slim. The heart belonged to a 66 million year old dinosaur found in Harding County in Northwestern South Dakota. The dinosaur, found in 1993, weighed over 650 pounds and was 13 feet long. The dinosaur was in fairly good condition with the exception of the left side of the skeleton. The small, plant-eating Thescelosaurus, nicknamed ‘Willo’ has been acquired by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Thescelosaurus was an ornithischian, or "bird-hipped," dinosaur that lived in the latter stage of the Cretaceous period. This was approximately 1 million years before the end of the dinosaur era. Native to North America, its range extended from the northern United States up into Canada. Since using the 3-D software to reveal Willo's heart, scientists have also used it to create 3-D images of the fossil's skull, and of remains from other dinosaurs in the museum's collection. (Fisher, Paul)
The Triceratops were very interesting dinosaurs. They were very smart and strategic. They moved in herds and used mating calls. They were very complex. They had an interesting body shape that gave them an advantage towards their predators. They were known for their horns and parrot-like beaks. They were herbivores that lived in North America. Triceratopses were very interesting.
“Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs” is written by Stephen Jay Gould, professor of geology and zoology at Harvard. This essay is one of more than a hundred articles on evolution, zoology, and paleontology published by Gould in national magazines and journals. It tells about scientific proposals for the extinction of dinosaurs – a confusing but an exciting problem that humanity tries to solve. By analyzing and describing each of the claims for the reptiles’ demise – sex, drugs, and disasters – Gould differentiates bad science from good science and explains what makes some theories silly speculations, while the other, a testable hypothesis.
...pdated 1995, accessed 3 Sept. 2000), Dino Buzz – What killed The Dinosaurs ? – Current Arguments,
seems like it happened so sudden, as geologic time goes, that almost all the dinosaurs
Pterosaur species sometimes varied vastly while retaining certain characteristics that made them pterosaurs. Specie size is one of the most varying characteristic. The smallest specie was found to be Nemicolopterus crypticus, having a wingspan of about 250 millimeter (Wang). One of the largest known species was Hatzegopteryx thambema, and they had a wingspan of 10 to 11 meters (Witton and Martill). Based on fossil records, it was not hard for researchers to discover that these were flying animals. However, at a first glance in 1784, Cosimo Alessandro Collini mistakenly thought that the wings of a pterosaur were used as flippers. But, he was soon corrected. A more researched argument is over the idea of pterosaurs being bipedal
Norell, Mark, Lowell Dingus, and Eugene S. Gaffney. "Why Did Nonavian Dinosaurs Become Extinct?" Discovering Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Lessons of Prehistory. Berkeley: U of California, 1995. N. pag. Print.
Reptiles are vertebrate, or backboned animals constituting the class Reptilia and are characterized by a combination of features, none of which alone could separate all reptiles from all other animals.The characteristics of reptiles are numerous, therefore can not be explained in great detail in this report. In no special order, the characteristics of reptiles are: cold-bloodedness; the presence of lungs; direct development, without larval forms as in amphibians; a dry skin with scales but not feathers or hair; an amniote egg; internal fertilization; a three or four-chambered heart; two aortic arches (blood vessels) carrying blood from the heart to the body, unlike mammals and birds that only have one; a metanephric kidney; twelve pairs of cranial nerves; and skeletal features such as limbs with usually five clawed fingers or toes, at least two spinal bones associated with the pelvis, a single ball-and-socket connection at the head-neck joint instead of two, as in advanced amphibians and mammals, and an incomplete or complete partition along the roof of the mouth, separating the food and air passageways so that breathing can continue while food is being chewed. These and other traditional defining characteristics of reptiles have been subjected to considerable modification in recent times. The extinct flying reptiles, called pterosaurs or pterodactyls, are now thought to have been warm-blooded and covered with hair. Also, the dinosaurs are also now considered by many authorities to have been warm-blooded. The earliest known bird, archaeopteryx, is now regarded by many to have been a small dinosaur, despite its covering of feathers The extinct ancestors of the mammals, the therapsids, or mammallike reptiles, are also believed to have been warm-blooded and haired.
They were the Herrerasaurus and the Eoraptor. They were the first (but definitely not least) bipedal carnivores, which were meat-eating dinosaurs that walked on two legs. They were the dominant species, up until the start of the Jurassic period that occurred about 200 million years ago, where much bigger dinos were in abundance. Modern reptiles are cousins to the dinosaurs, and crocodiles are among the most ferocious reptiles alive today. Reptiles suffer from fewer diseases than warm-blooded animals, but reptiles do get sick.
Cartilaginous and bony fishes were abundant. Large fishes and marine reptiles were common; the largest bony fish ever to live existed at this time called the Leedsichthys, coming in at a mindboggling size. Estimates of the size of this fish range from 20 to 27 meters and mass from 20 to 50 tons (Owen). This species is the largest bony fish ever to have ever existed and swam in what is now near England. Jurassic pliosaurs are some of the largest carnivorous reptiles ever discovered, even rivaling Tyrannosaurus which lived during the Cretaceous Period, although the pliosaurs was not a dinosaur but distant cousins of modern turtles ranging from 4 to 15 meters. The ichthyosaurs were at their height, sharing the oceans with the plesiosaurs, huge marine reptiles covering the globe.