Interesting dinosaur facts leave no one behind.indifferent, as they allow to learn something new about the lizards that inhabited our planet millions of years ago. The most amazing information about prehistoric reptiles, their character, features, and eggs found its place in this article.
The era when giant lizards 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 span of the existence of our planet into 2 stages: phanerose and Precambrian. They are called eons, or eonotems. And are divided into periods.
Dinosaurs appeared during the Jurassic periodMesozoic - the second era of the Phanerozoic eon, when the continents already looked almost the same as 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. Next to them lived mammals, which were much smaller than them and had thick fur.
Окаменелые останки этих существ были обнаружены on all continents of the planet. Since the finds at a greater depth are older than the ones located above, paleontologists must fix their place of occurrence. At the moment, scientists almost exactly calculate the fossil age by the level of radioactivity of the rock in which it was located. The isotopes contained in them change their radioactivity with time. By measuring its quantity, one can determine the age of the rock and the fossils preserved in it.
Many are interested in the question of what size dinosaurs were. But there is no definite answer to it, since everything depends on the type of reptile.
The largest dinosaur is the plesiosaur,prehistoric animal with a very long neck. Judging by his petrified remains, he was of enormous size. In particular, his body length was 16 m. He lived at sea, ate fish and invertebrates.
Plesiosaurs were superbly adapted tolife in salt ponds. However, they breathed in the lungs, so they had to come to the surface to inhale the air. These lizards had 4 limbs, which eventually transformed into flippers, and the body resembling a barrel. 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.
This title belongs to the tyrannosaur who inhabited Asia and North America. He had a body 14 meters long and was a lucky hunter.
Tyrannosaurus had a massive skull, whichbalanced by a heavy, long and stiff tail. The pangolin had large and powerful hind limbs, and its front legs — small but powerful legs — had two clawed toes.
Tyrannosaurus, according to scientists, had a body weight in6.8 tons. He was a super-predator, and hadrosaurs, ceratops and sauropods usually became his prey. At the same time, some scientists believe that he mainly fed on carrion.
At the moment, only about 30 skeletons of tyrannosaurs have been found, so the appearance of the lizard, reconstructed from these fossil remains, rather accurately conveys how it looked in reality.
It is believed that the most primitive dinosaur representative is Eoraptor lunensis with a body length of about 1 m, belonging to the order of theropods. His skeleton was found in Argentina in 1993.
The most intelligent are dinosaurs from the troodontids order. However, their intelligence is still inferior to the mental abilities of modern birds.
Interesting fact: the smallest brain, the size of which was a walnut, belonged to a stegosaurus - a lizard with a body length of 9 m and a weight of 3 tons.
The first in 1859, found a laying Gipselosaurus.Dinosaur eggs were round in shape and elongated. They differed only in size, which ranged from 15-120 cm. Dinosaur eggs of various kinds were found in Spain, Chechnya, the People's Republic of China and in India.
The largest fossil clutch belonged to zauropodam. She was found in northeastern Spain. The age of several hundred eggs that were in it was approximately 65-70 Ma.
The newest stonework was discovered in 2010 in the Volgograd region. A total of 14 eggs excavated, ranging in size from 1 m to 1 m 20 cm.
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 torso was 2.5 m wide. The distinguishing feature of such animals was a large mace that was at the end of their tail. Her lizard used as a powerful weapon, crushing with his help his enemies.
Interesting dinosaur facts also concern them.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, he ran a 100-pound Dromiceiomimus, who lived in the province of Alberta in Canada. He developed a speed of more than 60 km / h.
Listing interesting facts about dinosaurs, you can notnot to mention the lizards, which are the direct ancestors of birds. Among them, the most surprising was the four-winged micro-raptor Gui. He was only able to make short trips from one tree to a tree. The length of this lizard was 77 cm. It is believed that this creature, the fossilized remains of which were found in China in 2010, is the last link in the evolutionary chain of reptile transformation into birds.
The record holder for this parameter was a terizinosaurus,found in the basin of the river Nemegt, in the territory of Mongolia. The length of his nails on the outer curvature was 91 cm. The Terizinosaurus had no teeth, and the skull was brittle. The lizard ate, most likely, termites. Spinosaurus, whose body was 9 m long, also had huge nails. They reached 30 cm.
Interesting facts about dinosaurs are quite numerous. In particular, few know that:
Now you know a lot of interesting facts aboutancient lizards and reptiles. At the same time, the amazing world of dinosaurs, extinct many millions of years ago, still harbors many mysteries that are still waiting for their researchers.
