Intro to Dinosaurs

 Intro to Dinosaurs

We all know about the amazing dinosaurs, they capture our imaginations. These creatures are colossal, magnificent creatures, their behavior intrigues us but since this is an intro we won’t dig too deep into the lives of these creatures, before we start this is a must-know fact, the word dinosaur means terrible lizard this definition was given by Sir Richard Owen. So we have a simple dino classification, it’s based on the type of their hips, on one hand, we have the Ornithischian meaning bird-hipped and on the other, we have the Saurischian meaning reptile-hipped. Now, this era in which the dinos lived in was called the Mesozoic Era this era lasted from 251 million years ago to 65 million years ago, this era is divided into 3 different periods the Triassic, Jurassic, and last but not least the Cretaceous, we also had 2 different eras before the dinosaurs The Precambrian Time and the Paleozoic Era. During the Paleozoic Era and Mesozoic Era(except the Cretaceous) we did not have modern continents but had one supercontinent called Pangea, this continent started to drift apart in the Triassic and Jurassic and then in the Cretaceous, the drifting stopped and formed our modern-day continents you can actually see it on a globe where you will notice that South America and Africa fit together like a puzzle! Now let’s talk about the species, we have obviously, the herbivores and the carnivores, as we all know we have a lot of famous herbivores like the Apatosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and many more, lot of these species were defenceless against the carnivores but most herbivores were also armed with horns, spikes, and full body armour but the carnivores aren’t less either, they have their sharp teeth one bite could prove to be very lethal and don’t forget their razor-sharp claws one slash is all it takes. Let’s meet some of these baddies we all know about the mighty and ravenous Tyrannosaurus Rex one bite of it could crush a skull! Now we pay a visit to these lethal pack-hunters, the Velociraptor, in Jurassic park movies they seem big but actually, they are the size of a turkey and they also had feathers but its cousin Utahraptor is twice it’s the size and had the same curved claw as the Velociraptors these claws were 6 inches, imagine that! Now we have the Spinosaurus they mostly hunted fish but was actually bigger than T-Rex. Now we talk about the marine species actually, these species were not dinosaurs some of them were reptiles others were just sea creatures like we have today at that time sharks were there one example is the long-extinct colossal Megalodon few examples of marine reptiles are the Archelon the biggest turtles to ever swim in the seas, the petrifying Mosasaurus, the Ichthyosaurus and last but not least the Elasmosaurus. Now we all know about the decline of these antediluvian creatures has boggled scientists for centuries and there are many theories but recent research has proven that a comet had come crashing down on the Earth causing a series of shockwaves, earthquakes, and tsunamis thus ending the reign of the dinosaurs.