Millions of years ago, these giants of the ancient world - dinosaurs reigned on the planet. Only in the XIX century, scientists began to study their remains. There were many questions related to the ancient dinosaurs. One of them: “What does a dinosaur look like?” - still not finally clarified. Too large a chasm of time divides the modern man and these amazing animals to speak with confidence about their appearance.
The ancient giants of the planet
Dinosaurs appeared (photos and descriptions of some of them can be seen in our article) about 230 million years ago. The time of the origin of these creatures dates back to the late Triassic period, their heyday fell on the Jurassic, and disappearance occurred at the end of the Cretaceous. Over millions of years of existence, dinosaurs have spread throughout the Earth. Their remains were found even in Antarctica.
Dinosaur species
Today, scientists know more than a thousand species of ancient reptiles. They are divided into predators, herbivores, aquatic and flying dinosaurs. Such a variety creates great difficulties, because usually in the hands of scientists to determine the type of an ancient animal there are at best only a few bones.
How do researchers recreate the appearance of ancient dinosaurs?
Types of dinosaurs with a description can be found everywhere - in encyclopedias on the ancient world of our planet, scientific papers, books for children. A large number of films, documentaries and children's cartoons are dedicated to the giants of the past. If you ask any person, he will quite accurately describe the appearance of the ancient dinosaurs. How do we know what dinosaurs look like? Photo and video with them, of course, is impossible to get, because they existed millions of years ago. The answer lies in the remains of these reptiles. To date, they have found more than one hundred thousand. These include not only bones, but also dinosaur eggs, their excrement, petrified footprints and bodies.
According to fragments of the skeleton, scientists and restore the appearance of the dinosaurs. What do dinosaur bones look like? Outwardly, they differ from the remains of modern animals in their size and degree of preservation. Unfortunately, finding a whole skeleton is an incredible rarity. Most often, scientists have to determine how a dinosaur looks based on scattered remains.
Where are dinosaur bones found?
On Earth there are many places where you can find the remains of ancient giants. In the Canadian province of Alberta, more than a thousand such valuable finds have been discovered. These were the remains of the centrosaurus lizards. In Argentina, in the province of Chubut, the bones of seven titanosaurs were found. In Mexico, in 2014, on the territory of one of the deserts, the bones of 14 dinosaurs were discovered. A large number of dinosaur remains continue to be found in the Chinese province of Shandong. Bones of large theropods - predatory ancient dinosaurs of the tyrannosaurus and ankylosaurus were found here.
How is the process of restoring the appearance of the ancient dinosaurs?
Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. Soft tissue during this time turned to dust, and the bones were petrified. Since the 19th century, we have learned much more about what a dinosaur looks like, but now there is no certainty as to whether scientists restore their appearance correctly.
This work is painstaking and time-consuming. First you need to collect the skeleton from the found fragments. If some parts are missing, they have to be restored. Then artists begin to work. Through the skull and skeleton, they recreate the body and skin of the lizard. For this, the technique used in forensics is used. It looks like the skin of a dinosaur, it was possible to find out thanks to fossils, on which its texture and pattern are clearly visible. It was waterproof, dry and consisted of scales. On the found prints, hard patches and elastic folds of the skin are clearly visible. Some species of ancient reptiles were protected by a shell. These include ankylosaurs.
One of the problems of determining what a dinosaur looks like is to determine the color of the skin. So far, paleontologists cannot reliably answer this question. Therefore, modern animals and birds are taken as the basis for the reconstruction of the appearance of the lizard. Thus, the artist Tyler Killor, who, on the instructions of scientists, restored the appearance of the rugops dinosaur, took the color of the plumage of a whale-headed bird as a sample.
But even the most carefully recreated appearance of a dinosaur can undergo changes. Modern technology and recent discoveries in paleontology provide new data on ancient giants.
What a dinosaur looks like: a general description
The ancient lizards were divided into two large orders: lizardotazovye and poultry. The latter were sauropods (herbivores). Lizard dinosaurs were divided into two groups: theropods (predators) and sauropods. These are representatives of large lizards with massive bodies and long necks: apatosaurus, diplodocus, brachiosaurus). Each of the dinosaur squads is represented by both two-legged dinosaurs and those who moved on four limbs.
Predatory dinosaurs in most cases moved on two legs.
It is believed that all dinosaurs were huge growth. This is not true. Among them were both real giants (seismosaurus, spinosaurus), and small lizards (compsognathus, heterodontosaurus).
Dinosaurs are one of the most amazing representatives of the animal world of our planet in the past. They combined the features of several currently separate groups of modern animals: crocodiles, lizards, birds and mammals.
With crocodiles they are brought together by the skin and the location of the teeth. Their skull is the same as that of lizards, and the structure of the tubular bones makes dinosaurs related to mammals. The structure of the pelvis and hind limbs brings the ancient reptiles closer to the birds.
Most of the dinosaurs moved on their hind legs, located vertically, leaning on walking with their fingers. This type of movement made them more active.
There are still disagreements about the structure of internal organs among scientists. What they were, is now impossible to determine, so the anatomy of birds and lizards is taken as the basis. A little more is known about the brain of ancient reptiles. The whole skulls found make it possible to assume with a high degree of probability that in structure it resembled the brains of modern lizards.
There are difficulties with clarifying the color of the skin. Perhaps part of the dinosaurs had skin of a protective color. Some could have a bright color, following the example of modern lizards.
According to recent studies, a number of ancient dinosaurs had feathers.
This is not only the well-known archeopteryx, but also a microraptor, caudypterix and others.
Amazing appearance: the most famous and unusual dinosaurs
Among the ancient dinosaurs there are very interesting individuals whose appearance is unusual. Zuhomim - a huge predator - with a narrow mouth looked like a crocodile, and the claw of the first finger on its forelimbs reached a length of more than 30 centimeters.
Carnotaurus possessed horns. In this predator, they most likely played the role of identification marks.
The griposaurus had a beak and approximately 800 teeth. He was a herbivore or predator, is still unknown.
Tyrannosaurus Rex is a dinosaur, the description of which is always of great interest. This is one of the largest predators of the past, the appearance and dimensions of which look intimidating.
He was a two-legged, had a massive head, which was balanced by a large tail. A feature of the tyrannosaurus is that with powerful hind limbs it had very small front legs with two fingers. Due to the fact that among the 30 found skeletons of this predator, several were completely preserved, scientists were able to carefully study its structure, biology and biomechanics.
Conclusion
The history of the amazing giants that inhabited the Earth millions of years ago has not yet been fully studied. New finds and more accurate research methods can reveal many secrets of the lifestyle, appearance and physiology of dinosaurs.