Facts about Dinosaurs

1. Dinosaurs first appeared in the Triassic period (248 until 213 million years), and dominant land animals of the Jurassic period, and at the end of the Cretaceous period (65 million years).

2. We know about dinosaurs because fossils have been found. The fossils, which are usually found in sedimentary rocks, including parts of the body fossils (bones, teeth, skin, nails, etc.) and trace fossils (fossils of the body), which shows how the animals lived, including footprints, nests, burrows, teeth marks of fertilizers, etc.

3. Earth's continents slowly move through a process known as plate tectonics. When dinosaurs first appeared in the Triassic period, all continents of the globe came together in a supercontinent called Pangea.

4. All known types of dinosaurs, died in the late Cretaceous period. There are many different theories that could have happened, but today the most popular theory is that an asteroid hit the Earth, blocking sunlight to be NOK food available. Evidence for this theory is a layer of iridium, which are believed to come from asteroids, found worldwide, and a possible impact site in southern Mexico.

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

6. There are few candidates for the largest dinosaur, as there are different types of dinosaurs were over 100 feet (30 meters) long. The most important was probably some kind of sauropod (a four-legged herbivorous dinosaur with a long neck), who lived in the late Jurassic or early Cretaceous.

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

8. People have been finding dinosaur fossils for hundreds of years, but did not know they were until very recently. The first time a dinosaur was scientifically described in 1824 by William Buckland.

9. At the same time that dinosaurs ruled the earth, many aquatic reptiles that ruled the waves, but were not dinosaurs. These aquatic reptiles Nothosaurus including plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and ichythosaurs.

10. Even the birds seem to have evolved from dinosaurs, not bird flu flying dinosaurs are known. However, the flying reptiles at the same time that dinosaurs were probably best known as pterosaurs.