| Home | Free Articles for Your Site | Submit an Article | Advertise | Link to Us | Search | Contact Us |
This site is an archive of old articles

    SEARCH ARTICLES
    Custom Search


vertical line

Article Surfing Archive



10 Amazing Facts About Dinosaurs - Articles Surfing

We're all familiar with dinosaurs from movies such as Jurassic Park and King Kong, but how much do you really know about dinosaurs? Here are 10 facts about dinosaurs which you can amaze your friends and family with:

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

2. We know about dinosaurs because fossils have been found. The fossils, which are generally found in sedimentary rocks, including fossilized body parts (bones, teeth, skin, claws, etc.), as well as trace fossils ("ichnofossils") which show how the animals lived, which include footprints, burrows, nests, toothmarks, dung, etc.

3. The earth's continents slowly move through a process known as "plate tectonics". When dinosaurs first appeared during the Triassic period, all the earth's continents were joined together in one super-continent known as "Pangea".

4. Park">All the familiar types of dinosaurs, died off at the end of the Cretaceous period. There are many different theories why this may have happened, but today the most popular theory is that an asteriod hit the earth, blocking out the sunlight so that there was not enough food available. Evidence for this theory is a layer of iridium, which is believed to have come from the asteroid, has been found around the world, and a possible impact site found in southern Mexico.

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

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

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

8. People have been finding dinosaur fossils for hundreds of years, but didn't know what they were until quite recently. The first time that a dinosaur was scientifically described was in 1824, by William Buckland.

9. At the same time that dinosaurs dominated the land, there were many aquatic reptiles that dominated the seas, although these were not dinosaurs. These aquatic reptiles included plesiosaurs, nothosaurs, mosasaurs and ichythosaurs.

10. Although birds seem to have evolved from dinosaurs, no non-avian flying dinosaurs are known. However, at the time of dinosaurs there were many flying reptiles, known as pterosaurs.

Submitted by:

Sunil Tanna

For more information about dinosaurs, please go to http://www.dinosaurjungle.com/ For latest dinosaur news please go to http://www.dinosaursnews.com/ This article is Copyright (C) 2007, Answers 2000 Limited. Permission is granted to reprint provided no changes are made, and all hyperlinks a



        RELATED SITES






https://articlesurfing.org/education2/10_amazing_facts_about_dinosaurs.html

Copyright © 1995 - Photius Coutsoukis (All Rights Reserved).










ARTICLE CATEGORIES

Aging
Arts and Crafts
Auto and Trucks
Automotive
Business
Business and Finance
Cancer Survival
Career
Classifieds
Computers and Internet
Computers and Technology
Cooking
Culture
Education
Education #2
Entertainment
Etiquette
Family
Finances
Food and Drink
Food and Drink B
Gadgets and Gizmos
Gardening
Health
Hobbies
Home Improvement
Home Management
Humor
Internet
Jobs
Kids and Teens
Learning Languages
Leadership
Legal
Legal B
Marketing
Marketing B
Medical Business
Medicines and Remedies
Music and Movies
Online Business
Opinions
Parenting
Parenting B
Pets
Pets and Animals
Poetry
Politics
Politics and Government
Real Estate
Recreation
Recreation and Sports
Science
Self Help
Self Improvement
Short Stories
Site Promotion
Society
Sports
Travel and Leisure
Travel Part B
Web Development
Wellness, Fitness and Diet
World Affairs
Writing
Writing B