Interesting facts about dinosaurs do not leave anyone indifferent, as they allow us to learn something new about the dinosaurs that inhabited our planet millions of years ago. The most amazing information about prehistoric reptiles, their character, features and eggs found a place in this article.
Dinosaur land
The era when giant dinosaurs lived on our planet began 160 million years and lasted about 56 million years.
At the moment, it is customary to divide the entire time period of the existence of our planet into 2 stages: Phanerozoic and Precambrian. They are called eons, or eonotema. And are divided into periods.
Dinosaurs appeared during the Jurassic period of the Mesozoic - the second era of the Phanerozoic eon, when the continents already looked almost like today. A warm climate reigned on the planet at that time, contributing to the rapid development of life. The land was covered with dense thickets of pines, ferns, palms and cypresses. The fauna of the planet was represented by dinosaurs. Mammals lived next to them, which were significantly inferior in size and had thick coat.
How to determine the age of dinosaurs
The fossilized remains of these creatures have been discovered on all continents of the planet. Since the finds at a great depth are older than those located higher, paleontologists necessarily fix the place of their occurrence. At the moment, scientists almost accurately calculate the age of the fossil by the level of radioactivity of the rock in which it was located. The isotopes contained in them change their radioactivity depending on time. By measuring its quantity, it is possible to determine the age of the rock and the fossils that have been preserved in it.
Giant lizard
Many are interested in the question of how large the dinosaurs were. But there is no definite answer to it, since everything depends on the type of reptile.
The largest dinosaur is the plesiosaurus, a prehistoric animal with a very long neck. Judging by its fossilized remains, it was huge. In particular, his body was 16 meters long. He lived at sea, fed on fish and invertebrate animals.
Plesiosaurs were perfectly adapted to life in salt water. However, they breathed lungs, so they had to come up to the surface to breathe air. These lizards had 4 limbs, which eventually turned into flippers, and a body resembling a barrel in shape. There were two types of plesiosaurs: with small heads and long necks and with short necks and huge heads. Interestingly, the largest dinosaur lived on all continents, including modern Antarctica.
The largest terrestrial carnivore of the planet of all time
This title belongs to the tyrannosaurus inhabiting Asia and North America. He had a body length of 14 m and was a successful hunter.
The tyrannosaurus had a massive skull, which was balanced by a heavy, long and stiff tail. The lizard had large and powerful hind limbs, and the front - small but powerful paws - had two clawed fingers.
Tyrannosaurus, according to scientists, had a body weight of 6.8 tons. He was a super-predator, and hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, and sauropods usually became his prey. At the same time, some scientists believe that he mainly ate carrion.
At the moment, only about 30 skeletons of tyrannosaurs have been found, so the appearance of the lizard, recreated from these fossil remains, accurately conveys what it really looked like.
Intelligence level
It is believed that the most primitive representative of dinosaurs is Eoraptor lunensis with a body length of about 1 m, belonging to the theropod order. His skeleton was found in Argentina in 1993.
The most intelligent are dinosaurs from the troodontid order. However, their intelligence was still inferior to the mental abilities of modern birds.
An interesting fact: the smallest brain, the size of which was about a walnut, belonged to a stegosaurus - a lizard with a body length of 9 m and a weight of 3 tons.
Eggs
The first in 1859 discovered the laying of a gypselosaurus. The dinosaur eggs were rounded and elongated in shape. They differed only in size, which ranged from 15-120 cm. Dinosaur eggs of various species were found in Spain, Chechnya, China and India.
The largest fossil clutch belonged to sauropods. She was found in northeastern Spain. The age of several hundred eggs that were in it was approximately 65-70 million years.
The latest masonry was discovered in 2010 in the Volgograd region. In total, 14 eggs were excavated from 1 m to 1 m 20 cm in size.
Armored Dinosaurs
Ankylosaurs are the most protected dinosaurs. They had a kind of armor. Their back and head were protected by bone horns, plates and spikes, and the body had a width of 2.5 m. A distinctive feature of these animals was a large mace, which was located at the end of their tail. Its lizard was used as a powerful weapon, crushing with its help its enemies.
Best runners
Interesting facts about dinosaurs relate to their physical capabilities. In particular, it is known that representatives of at least one species of carnivorous dinosaurs could move at a speed of 40 km / h. Even faster ran 100-pound Dromiceiomimus, who lived in the province of Alberta in Canada. He developed a speed of more than 60 km / h.
Four-winged individuals
Listing interesting facts about dinosaurs, it is impossible not to mention the dinosaurs, which are the direct ancestors of birds. Among them, the most surprising was the four-winged Gui micro raptor. He was able to make only short planning flights from one tree to a tree. The length of this lizard was 77 cm. It is believed that this creature, whose petrified remains were found in China in 2010, is the last link in the evolutionary chain of transformation of reptiles into birds.
Longest claws
The record holder for this parameter was the Terizinosaurus, found in the Nemegt River Basin, on the territory of Mongolia. The length of his nails along the external curvature was 91 cm. Therizinosaurus had no teeth, and the skull was fragile. The dinosaur ate, most likely, termites. Spinosaurus also had huge nails, whose body was 9 m long. They reached 30 cm.
Did you know that ...
Interesting facts about dinosaurs are quite numerous. In particular, few know that:
- Northern dinosaurs patrolled territories to detect prey and went huge distances from the nest;
- dinosaurs had five fingers;
- apatosaurs could move their tails at a speed greater than the speed of sound;
- the largest skull was that of a herbivorous dinosaur - a torosaur, which wore a giant bone shield around its neck;
- no dinosaur weighed as much as a modern blue whale;
- in the era of ancient reptiles, our planet did not have ice caps;
- in Chinese traditional medicine, medicines are used, which include powder from dinosaur bones;
- the ancient reptile Suuwassea emilieae had a hole in the head, the purpose of which to this day remains unknown to science;
- due to their large size, adult tyrannosaurs could not move quickly, therefore they hunted worse, obtained little food and died early;
- nigerosaurs had 500 teeth;
- dinosaurs will never be cloned, since such a procedure is possible only with genetic material no more than 2,000,000 years old.
Now you know a lot of interesting facts about ancient lizards and reptiles. At the same time, the wonderful world of dinosaurs, extinct many millions of years ago, is still fraught with many mysteries that are still waiting for their researchers.