40 Amazing Facts about Dinosaurs | Amazing Facts 4U
- The word dinosaur comes from the Greek language and means ‘terrible lizard’. The word was coined by English paleontologist Richard Owen in 1842.
- Dinosaurs lived during a period of Earth’s history called the Mesozoic (“middle life”) Era. The era is also known as the age of dinosaurs amazingly covered three geological periods of time; the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods.
- An amazing fact is dinosaurs ruled the Earth for over 160 million years, from the Triassic period around 230 million years ago through the Jurassic period and until the end of the Cretaceous period around 65 million years ago when a mass extinction occurred. Contrast it with humans who have been around for just 2 million years.
- The fact is dinosaurs were not the first reptiles to rule the earth.
- Many scientists believe that a massive meteorite hit the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico 65 million years ago and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. The 112-mile-wide crater was caused by a rock 6 miles in diameter. The crater is called the Chixulub crater. It would have hit Earth’s crust with immense force at 30,000 km per hour sending shockwaves around the world.
- Following massive meteorite hit, no land animal heavier than a large dog survived. However, animals such as sharks, jellyfish, fish, scorpions, birds, insects, snakes, turtles, lizards, and crocodiles survived.
- New research indicates the asteroid that killed the Dinosaurs did so, not primarily due to dust blocking out the sun, but by ejecting 500 cubic miles of tiny glass spherules at near escape velocity. Upon falling to earth they caused fires destroying life in vast areas.
- At present over 700 different species of dinosaurs have been identified and named.
- It’s amazing that dinosaurs lived on all the continents, including Antarctica.
- Scientists estimate that dinosaurs lived to be between 75 and 300 years old based on the structure of their bones.
- The amazing thing is rather than being carnivores (meat-eaters), the largest dinosaurs such as the Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus were actually herbivores (plant eaters).
- Dinosaur skulls had large holes or “windows” that made their skulls lighter. Some of the largest skulls were as long as a car.
- The first dinosaur to be found and named was Megalosaurus. It was named in 1824 by Reverend William Buckland.
- The first discovery of dinosaur remains in North America was made in 1854 by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden during his exploration of the upper Missouri River.
- The longest dinosaur was Seismosaurus, which measured over 40 meters.
- The heaviest dinosaur was Brachiosaurus at 80 tonnes. It was the equivalent of 17 African Elephants. Brachiosaurus was 16 meters tall and 26 meters long and is the largest dinosaur skeleton to be mounted in a museum.
- The oldest dinosaurs known are 230 million years old and have been found in Madagasgar.
- The single biggest dinosaur bone ever found is a 5×5 ft. argentinosaurus vertebra (backbone) fossil that weighed over a ton.
- An amazing fact is an American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews found the first known dinosaur eggs in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert in 1923. Prior to his discovery, scientists didn’t know exactly how dinosaurs reproduced.
- The biggest dinosaur eggs scientists know of are the eggs of the stegosaurus, which were about 19 inches long while the smallest dinosaur eggs ever found measured about 0.7 inches found in northeastern Thailand in 2002.
- About 40 kinds of dinosaur eggs have been discovered.
- The amazing fact is that scientifically, modern-day birds aren’t just descended from dinosaurs, but are considered to be dinosaurs and, therefore, dinosaurs are not actually extinct.
- Amazingly in Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs are only on the screen for 15 minutes. The movie is over two hours long.
- The site where the Parthenon was built had to be cleared of hundreds of dinosaur bones (then called giants’ bones) before construction could begin.
- If aliens located 60-65 million light-years away from us, looked at earth through a really powerful telescope today, they would see dinosaurs!
- The amazing fact is if Earth’s history were condensed into 24 hrs, life would’ve appeared at around 4 am, land plants at 10:24 pm, dinosaur extinction at 11:41 pm, and human history would’ve begun at 11:58:43 pm.
- There’s a small town called Dinosaur, Colorado (USA). Some of its street names include Brontosaurus Blvd, Brontosaurus Bypass, Stegosaurus Freeway, and Tyrannosaurus Trail.
- An amazing fact is the last time that the Sun was in its current position in space around the Milky Way, dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
- Amazingly scientists aren’t sure what color dinosaurs were.
- The fact is that DNA has a 521-year half-life, meaning the oldest cloneable samples of DNA could be no more than 2 million years old, ruling out any possibility of ever replicating dinosaurs, as the youngest dinosaurs were around more than 65 million years ago.
- The fact is earth’s rotation time changes at the rate of approximately 17 milliseconds a century and the length of a day for the dinosaurs was closer to 22 hours.
- Hans Larsson is a scientist who is trying to reactivate dormant dinosaur traits that linger in unexpressed bird genes. So far, he has managed to create chicken embryos that have teeth and long reptilian tails.
- The Nigersaurus had 500 plus teeth: 50 columns with 9 replacement teeth behind them. The front ones would be worn out in just a month, making the Nigersaurus the fastest teeth-replacing dinosaur.
- There is a Civil War/Dinosaur-themed amusement park in Natural Bridge, VA which features statues of Dinosaurs fighting Civil War Soldiers.
- Seismosaurus is considered the largest dinosaur to ever have existed with a height of amazing 84 feet, 150 foot long and weighing 150 tons.
- During the Cretaceous period (145 – 100 million years ago), Earth’s climate was so warm that there were no polar ice caps, and forests probably extended all the way to the South Pole. Local plants and dinosaurs evolved to live in continuous sunlight in the summer and darkness in the winter.
- Chinese villagers used to consume dinosaur fossils as medicine believing the fossils to be “flying dragon bone.”
- The first dinosaur bone described in the scientific literature was thought to be the femur of a giant human.
- The first dinosaur in space was a Maiasaura fossil taken on a space shuttle mission in 1985.
- A fossil Coelophysis skull was taken into orbit, and then to the Mir space station, by the space shuttle Endeavour in 1998.
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