Dinosaurs are well-known and well-loved by children of all ages, but the name still means different things to different people. While that is true that dinosaurs were real and live animals that lived in most regions of the world yet died out 65 million years ago, there is still a lot of doubt surrounding their nature and their ways of life since no man has ever seen a living dinosaur. There is also little proof that dinosaurs lived with or were tamed by our prehistoric ancestors, contrary to what is shown in some TV shows and comic strips. We only know of their existence by their remains, usually documented in bones, either found as complete skeletons or separately. We have also found their footprints in rock, as well as some eggs embedded in them. Most of the bigger dinosaur specimens have now been collected and displayed in larger museums. Who were these big, amazing animals who walked the earth? Dinosaurs are commonly accepted as the larger species that lived in what is now known as the Age of Reptiles, which was about more than 200 million years ago. It is estimated that the dinosaur age lasted for some 165 million years, but this figure does not mean that individual dinosaurs lived very long lives. Most scientists still believe that their life spans were no longer than those of the large game animals that exist in Africa today. As reptiles, dinosaurs had cold blood and scaly skins. The female of the species laid eggs on dry land. Like our reptiles today, the lives of dinosaurs were lived in a much slower manner than warm-blooded mammals. Their food requirements would probably equal those of large cold-blooded animals we have today. The name "reptile" comes from the Latin verb that means "to creep". However, our snakes and lizards have not fired our imaginations as dinosaurs have. Why do dinosaurs arouse such interest? For starters, a simple answer would be that many dinosaurs were very, very large. Their size alone would inspire a lot of awe. Also, they are not like modern reptiles because many of them ran on hind legs. Some dinosaurs even climbed trees. Other dinosaurs floated in swamps and others viciously attacked live animals. The name "dinosauria" was given in 1841 by Richard Owen, a British anatomist. He said that he made the name up from the Greek words that meant "fearfully great lizards". Modern science has proven that many of the dinosaurs were not as fearfully large as we once imagined and that most of them were actually quite small. So the word "dinosauria" is technically out of date, but it is continued to be used in the common form as the word "dinosaur". Dinosaurs were land-living reptiles and inhabited rivers, cakes and swamps. They were divided into flesh eaters and plant eaters. Some of them walked on to hind legs, while others walk on all fours. Most species had scaly skins, but some had prominent bone plates on the body or even had heavily armored heads. The origin of dinosaurs has been attributed to a small reptile known as a "pseudosuchia" or a kind of "false crocodile". Often, such creatures were only 2 feet long and half of their bodies were made up by the tail alone. The larger dinosaurs are said to have evolved from one or more of these little false crocodiles. Even the flying reptiles, or pterodactyls, have been connected to the small reptiles. There is still some doubt surrounding as to when the first recognizable dinosaur bones were officially discovered. Dinosaur footprints have been found by many people all over the world at many times and most of these findings are yet to be documented. Yet, the first complete dinosaur skeleton may have the one excavated in New Jersey toward the end of the 1700s. These bones are still available for examination and identification. Another step was found in the early 1800s and is now all seen in the British Museum of Natural History in London. Since then, many dinosaur species have been discovered in great numbers and in greater forms, especially in Africa, Australia, France, Argentina and Portugal. |
