interesting facts about dinosaurs

September 23, 2009 | In: History facts



The first dinosaur skeleton that was complete enough to be reassembled was discovered in 1858 by William Parker Foulke, in Haddonfield, New Jersey.

Foulke heard that gigantic bones had been found in a marl pit, and he investigated. Many more bones were uncovered, and the shape of the animal began to emerge. It took twenty years from the initial discovery of the bones in 1838 until the animal was reconstructed.

The skeleton showed the world that dinosaurs were more than short lumbering lizards. The animal that is now called Hadrosaurus foulkii was a biped, able to stand on two legs and run. It was the beginning of a revolution in paleontology.

Blue whales are bigger than any dinosaur found so far.

The smallest dinosaurs, were about the size of a chicken.

The oldest dinosaur types are known from rocks in Argentina and Brazil and are about 230 million years old. (source)

Approximately 700 dinosaur species have been named.

The longest dinosaur was Seismosaurus, which measured over 40 metres.

The dinosaur with the longest name was Micropachycephalosaurus meaning “tiny thick-headed lizard”. Its fossils have been found in China, and it was named in 1978 by the Chinese palaeontologist Dong. (source)

Galliminus could travel an estimated 35 miles per hour — faster than any Olympic sprinter. Coelophysis may have clocked in at 25 miles per hour, while Tyrannosaurus rex lumbered behind at only 15 miles per hour. (source)

One of the first dinosaurs was the Herrerasaurus. It lived about 230 million years ago. One of the last kinds was the Tyrannosaurus.


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3 Responses to interesting facts about dinosaurs

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interesting facts

September 29th, 2009 at 6:32 am

wooooooooooooooooow this is really interesting thing

i love jurassic park

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admin

July 20th, 2010 at 3:35 am

“Dinosaur” is the common term for any group of reptilian creatures, now extinct, that roamed the earth for more than 160 million years. The word is derived from the Greek deinos (terrible) and sauros (lizard)

Contrary to images often seen in the movies, the dinosaurs never ate a human, in fact, a human never got to see a dinosaur alive. The dinosaurs disappeared more than 60 million years ago and Homo Sapiens arrived on the planet only 40,000 years.

Dinosaurs lived throughout most of the Mesozoic Era, which lasted from 245 million to 66 million years ago. The Mesozoic Era is divided into three periods:
- Triassic Period (245 to 208 million years ago)
- Jurassic Period (208 to 114 million years ago)
- Cretaceous Period (114 to 66 million years ago)

From the abundant fossil evidence, scientists have determined that dinosaurs were the dominant form of terrestrial animal life during the Mesozoic Era. There was a continuous change of species of dinosaurs. Some of them lived along the three periods, sometimes over two and sometimes for one.

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leah

March 21st, 2012 at 3:26 pm

it was really helpful i wish you could put more on there but thankyou because im doing my GSCE for it!! ;)

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