Dinosaur facts
The ‘Mesozoic Era’ is best known as age of reptiles. In this era, various kinds of prehistoric reptiles lived. The largest dinosaurs were about 100 feet long and 50 feet tall. The smallest dinosaurs were about the size of a chicken. It is very difficult for scientists to find out how they sounded, behaved. They cannot determine whether a fossil is male or female.
Once dinosaurs dominated our planet for a long time but during the Mesozoic Era, they mysteriously went extinct.
Facts you didn’t know: –
- They first appeared about 230 million years ago.
- The word dinosaur is derived from merging of two words- Deinos, which means terrifying and Sauros which means lizard.
- In 1824, Megalosaurus was the first formally named dinosaur.
- The largest dinosaurs, Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus were plant eaters.
- Birds descended from a particular type of dinosaurs known as theropods.
- Theropods walked on two legs and were meat eaters.
- A study of fossils explained that some of the dinosaurs had feathers or body covering which was somewhat similar to feathers.
- Palaeontologist Richard Owen was the first one to coin the term dinosaur.