JesselASCP



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Less than two hundred years ago, no one ever dreamed there was such a thing as a dinosaur. Today, everyone knows about dinosaurs. In recent years, we have learned more and more about dinosaurs. At one time, we thought that most dinosaurs plodded along, dragging their tails. We know that most of them held their tails up off the ground, and that many could move very quickly. It was once thiught that all dinosaurs were cold-blooded, like modern reptiles, but most scientists now think many dinosaurs were warm blooded, like birds and mammals. There are new ideas about what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, and even an idea that birds are descendants of the dinosaurs. **
 * __Preface about dinosaurs __


 * __List of some Australian Dinosaurs__**
 * //[|Agrosaurus macgillivrayi]// - a //[|nomen dubium]// or [|junior synonym] of //[|Thecodontosaurus antiquus]//. ([|Prosauropoda])
 * "[|Allosaurus]" sp.([|Theropoda]; probably represents a [|basal] [|allosauroid] like //[|Fukuiraptor]//, not //Allosaurus//)[|[1]]
 * //[|Atlascopcosaurus loadsi]// ([|Ornithopoda])
 * //[|Austrosaurus mckillopi]// ([|Sauropoda])
 * //[|Austrosaurus]// sp. ([|Sauropoda]) (Elliot and Mary)
 * //[|Fulgurotherium australe]// ([|Ornithopoda])
 * //[|Kakuru kujani]// ([|Theropoda])
 * //[|Leaellynasaura amicagraphica]// ([|Ornithopoda])
 * //[|Minmi paravertebra]// ([|Ankylosauria])
 * //[|Muttaburrasaurus langdoni]// ([|Ornithopoda])
 * //[|Ozraptor subutaii]// ([|Theropoda])
 * //[|Qantassaurus intrepidus]// ([|Ornithopoda])
 * //[|Rapator ornitholestoides]// ([|Theropoda])
 * //[|Rhoetosaurus brownei]// ("Rhaetosaurus", "Rheteosaurus") ([|Sauropoda])
 * //[|Serendipaceratops arthurclarkei]// ([|Ceratopsia])
 * //[|Timimus hermani]// ([|Theropoda])
 * //[|Walgettosuchus woodwardi]// ([|Theropoda])

[|**http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hQm9sLhdbM**] [|**http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNOnIrAvvS4**] [|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBzsCcu0IEQhttp:] __ [] __ [] [] [] [] [] [] []
 * __Videos about dinosaurs__**

__**Dinosaur Questions to think about**__
 * 1) **What was the biggest dinosaur and wich period did it live?**
 * 2) **Wich dinosaur was the smallest of all?**
 * 3) **What kind of habitat did the dinosaurs live?**
 * 4) **Which dinosaur was the largest meat-eater?**
 * 5) **What is the first dinosaur ever found?**
 * 6) **Were there more plant-eaters or meat-eaters?**
 * 7) **What is the oldest dinosaur ever found?**
 * 8) **How many teeth did the T.rex have (and how big were they)?**
 * 9) **How are dinosaurs named?**
 * 10) **How (and when) did the dinosaur extinct?**


 * **The name "DINOSAUR" means from the Greek dinos(meaning "terribly great") and saur(lizard). It refers to their enormous size and reptilian appearance.It is now known that although they are descended from reptiles, dinosaurs are not related to lizards at all.**
 * **About 700 species of dinosaurs around the world so far and another 300 are still to be studied.**
 * **The most famous dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, are known from North America, but the best preseved dinosaur fossils come from the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and the Liaoning Province of north-east china.**
 * **Evidence that some dinosaurs looked after their young has been found in North America. Palaentologists have uncovered massive clutches of unhatched eggs, nestlings, juveniles and adult animals at a single site in Montana, USA. The remains belong to a species known as Maiasaura("Mother Lizard") and include a female dinosaur bringing plants back to the nest site.**
 * **Dinosaur Skeltons are made up of more than 200 bones. (Modern human beings have about 206). Although some dinosaurs were large and others small, in most animals the number of bones did not change, only the size. The exception was dinosaurs with extra long tails. They usually had a few more bones in their tails.**
 * **Archaeopteryx ("Ancient Feather") was a chicken to turkey-sized birdwith several features similar to the meat-eating dinosaurs. The fist fossils of Archeopteryx were found in Solnhofen, Germany, and are 150 million-years-ago.Archeopteryx was a remarkable animal. It had razor-sharp teeth, hand claws and a long bony tail like a dinosaur, but also possessed long feathers and a wish bone like a modern bird.**
 * **Some of the best fossils of early feathered dinosaurs come from the Liaoning Province China and areabout 140 million-years-ago.**
 * **Ankylosaurus was an armoured dinosaur with a hard, bony skin and massive club fused to the end of its tail. It was a plant-eater, with small peg-like teeth in a large solid skull. Ankylosaurus remains have been found in North America and date from the Late Creataceous Period, about 67-65 million years ago.**
 * **Stegosaurus is famous for having two large bony plates embedded along its back and two pairs of spikes on the end of its tail. Stegosaurus lived during the Jurassic Period, about 150 million years ago.**
 * **Iguanodon had deadly spiked "thumbs" which scientists believe it used as a defence against larger meat-eating dinosaurs. The teeth of Iguanodon were origanlly thought to be from a giant iguana lizard and its name means "iguana tooth". Iguanodons roamed England and Europe during the Early Creataceous Period(130-125 million years ago).**
 * **Labyrinthodonts were similar to modern salamanders, with broad, flat heads and long, slender bodies. They fed on fish, insects and smaller labyrinthodonts. The largest modern salamander is the Japanese Giant Salamander which grows to 1.5 m long, however, some prehistoric labyrinthodonts grew up to 4-5 m long.**
 * **Mammal-like reptiles(or synapsids), were small to large animals that had a stocky build and large claws. They walked on all fours and some species had very large canine teeth and dog-like heads. Many of the mammal-like reptiles were meat-eaters. Dimetrodon, with its massive head and large sail on its back.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Mosasaurs had long, lizard-like bodies and could grow to a massive 13 m. They are closely related to modern goannas and snakes.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Bone is usually preserved in its original state because the chemical from which it is made is very stable and resists change. The oldest original bones are more than 500 million-years-ago and come from fossil fishes in both western Queensland and China.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The oldest known fossils in the world are single-celled organisms from Western Australia and they are 3.5 billion-years-old.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Fossils don't have to be millions of years old. Mummified and frozen fossils of much younger animals have been found. A 3000-year old mummified Thylacine(Tasmanian Tiger) was found in a cave on Australia's Nullabor Plain.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Eric the opalised plesiosaur was found by opla miners near Coober Pedy, South Australia, in 1987. After being pieced together, Eric was sold for $320,000 to the Australian Museum in Sydney. The skeleton is now on permament display at the National Opal Collection, in Sydney. Opalised dinosaur fossils have only been found in Australia, but only from three sites- Lightning Ridge in New South Wales and Coober Pedy and Andamooka in South Australia.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The "Dinosaur Triangle" is the name given to an area in Queensland where most of Australia's dinosaur bones have been found. The three points of the triangle are Roma in the south-west and Julia Creek and Chillagoe in the north of the State.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Some rocks contain millions of fossil per cubic metre, more if microscopic fossils are counted.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**One of the richest fossile sites in southern Australia is Dinosaur Cove, Victoria. It was discovered by palaeontologist Dr Tom Rich and his colleagues in the 1980's, not far from where Australia's first dinosaur fossil wss found.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The most delicatley preserved fossils are found in fine-grained sedimaentary rock and include amazing detail, even feathers and skin.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Palaeontologists have used the growth rings on fossil corals to work out that about 390 million years ago, there were 399 days in the year. Astronomers agree the Earth's spin is slowing down, making each day longer and that is why a year is now only 365 days.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The lifespan of a dinosaur would depend on whether it was truly col-blooded or wam-blooded. If they were cold-blooded, they could have lived for more than 100 years as some giant reptiles, such as tortoises, do today.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The greatest chance in the fossil record is found in the Devonian Period, around 400 million years ago. The colonisation of land by plants and animals occured during the Devonian and the first amphibians, insects and forests appeared at this time.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The first animal body fossils come from the Ediacaran Period. They include the impressions of jellyfishes and othe creatures discovered in the Dlinders Ranges, South Australia, and in Africa, Russia and Canada.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The first land plants appeared about 430 million years ago. They were quite small, only 15-20 cm high. Before this, the land was bare. The first large plants and trees developed about 375 million years ago.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**During the Proterozoic Period, Earth's atmosphere and oceans became enriched with oxygen caused iron oxide deposits to form on the sea floor and some of these later became the mineral deposits of the Pilbara region, Western Australia, the source of most of our iron and steel.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Sauropods laid grapefruit-sized eggs in large clutches and fossilised titanosaur embyros in their eggs have been found in Argentina. However, not much is knwn about juvenile sauropods because very few fossils have been found. Young sauropods were probaly fast growing because they were only 30 cm long when they hatched. At this stage, they were too small to travel safely with a herd and probaly had to fend for themselves. Juvenile animals probably did not join a herd until they were at least half grown and, until then, they were an easy target for predators. Trackways of two juvenile animals(about one-third adult size) are known and the footprints indicate at least one of the animals was alone.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Argentinosaurus is the largest plant-eating dinosaur known from its skeleton. It was found in South America and was 35-40 m long and weighed 70 tonnes. The largest known meat-eatind dinosaur, Giganotosaurus(14 m), is also from South America. It beat Tyrannosaurus rex(12-13 m) by just a metre.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Footprints of sauropods in Western Australia and North America indicate that they walked in herds. The trackways show them walking in sigle file with juvenile animals in tow, (much like elephants today), or in massive groups with the dinosaurs moving parallel to each other. Fossil footprints also show that titanosaurus had a much wider gauge(width between the feet) than other sauropods and that they had lost their front toe claws.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**At first, sauropods were thought to be aquatic animals because scientists believed their enormous weight could only be supported in water. However footprints prove that suropods walked on land and their fossilised remains show their skeletons were strong enough to support their great weight.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The smallest "dinosaurs" alive today are tiny birds such as the hummingbird, which can fit into the palm of a human hand.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Apart from birds, the smallest dinosaur is the dromaeosaur called Microraptor. It lived during the Early Cetaceous Period in China and grew to 50cm long.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Mussasaurus("Mouse Lizard") was once thought to be the world's smallest dinosaur, measuring only 20 cm long. Palaeontologists now believe it is a juvenile prosauropod dinosaur because of its immature skeleton and proportionately large eyes(a trait of most animal babies).**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Thieves used a rock saaw and chisels to steal fossil footprints from a site in Western Australia in the 1990s. One of the stolen footprints belonged to a group of dinosaurs closely related to stegasaurus.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**A tiny dinosaur footprint, believed to be the smallest in the world, has been found on the Isle of Wight, Scotland. The footprint is thought to be from a baby dinosaur and is only 1.78 cm long. It come from the Jurassic Period(165 million years ago) and, amazingly, was found inside the footprint of a much larger animal, possibly and adult of the same species, perhaps its mother. Palaeontologiststhink the baby dinosaur was following its mother's footsteps like a duckling.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Most people(and dinosaurs) are about 5-6 times as high as their foot is long. Try it, measure your foot!**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The biggest dinosaur fossil found in Australia so so far is a giant sauropod footprint from near Broome in Western Australia. The footprint is about 1.7 m in diameter and the animal thate made it could have been 45 m long. Such a large animal would have been slow-moving, using its vast size as its best defence.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**One of the problems is determining dinosaur speed is that palaeontologists differ about how it should be calculated. Some scientists predict very fast movement, while others argue that dinosaurs were much slower.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The first estimates of dinosaur speed were made by comparing dinosaurs to modern animals: horses, ostriches and a human.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**We do not know the colour of dinosaur skin because fossils do not retain their pigments. Palaeontologists can guess what colours dinosaur might have been, based on their knowledge of the animals and living related species. Small dinosaurs probably had colours that allowed them to blend into their surroundings as a form of protection. However, some may have had bright colours to attract mates. Some modern reptiles develop vivid colours because their size made them easily visible.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**A stegosaur footprint found in Western Australia is the only evidenceso far that an armoured dinosaur with large bony plates and tail spikes existed on this continent.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Palaeontologists have suggested that the club-tailed ankylosaurus used the large bones at the one of their tails as decoys, or "false heads". Some modern species of lizards have tails that are shaped and coloured to resemble the animal's head to confuse predators. The elaborate tail attracts attention away from the lizard's head and, if attacked, the lizardd is ables to shed its tail. If a predator attacked an ankylosaurus tail it would recieve a nasty suprise as the swinging club could break limbs and make a large theropod lame.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Minmi is named after Minmi Crossing, near Roma in Queensland. The word "paravertebrae" refers to the bones in the animal's spinal coloumn.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Although carnivorous dinosaur teeth look similar, they differed in shape and size along the tooth row. In the front jaw, the teeth are thicker with fewer serrations and were used for stabbing and holding onto the prey. The teeth toward the back of the jaw are thinner and longer and curve backwards. The back teeth were used for slicing and ripping large chung of meat from the prey animal. Bony hinges along the jawline flexed outward to allow large pieces of food to be swallowed whole.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Muttaburrasaurus is thought to have had a slightly flexible upper jaw to assist with biting off and chewing ferns and other plants.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Quetzalcoatlus is the largest flying creature known, with a wingspam of upt to 15 m. The pterosaur would have spent most of its time gliding along across the skies, looking for prey. Fossils of Quetzalcoatlus come from the Late Cretaceous Period of North America.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The oldest known lizard from Australia was found in Victoria and come from the Early Ceataceous Period, approximately 110 million years ago.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Ancient animals lived alongside the dinosaurs, mostly small, shrew-like, insect-eaters, but there were some exceptions. Recent discoveries in China have revealed that some early mammals were large carnivores. Fossils of Repenomamus, show it was about the size of a dog and even fed on small dinosaurs!**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The Australian ichthyosaur, Platypterigius, was the last of a long line. Ichtyosaurs died out well before the end of the Cretaceous Period before the dinosaurs became extinct.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Scientists worked out that a meteorite hit the Earth 65 million years ago by looking for the presence of micro-diamonds, shocked quartz and the rare metal, Iridium, in the rocks. These are only ofund where meteorites strike and in the craters and mineral deposits around them.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**There are many different types of meteorites. Some are nearly pure iron and are thought to orginate from the cores of broken up minor planetesimals in the asteroid belt of our solar system. Others are stony meteorites with compositions like basalt rock.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Tektites are small glassy stones often grouped with meteorites. It is thought that tektites are formed when rocks from the Earth are melted and blasted into space by the impact of large meteorites. The pieces then re-enter the astosphere, melting as they fall to Earth. The word tektite come from the Greek tektos, meaning "molten".**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**A good dinosaur collecting season in Australia may be yield only 30-50 large bones, but this is equal to about 5 tonnes of bone and dirt is enough to fill one or two large trucks!**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The sediment around bones is sieved to try and find small teeth and bones from other animals. The smallest specimens are usually tiny teeth about the size of a grain of rice. Discovering these small fossils help palaeontologists develop a more complete picture of Australia's Age of Dinosaurs.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Excavation of dinosaur footprints at Lark Quarry, ner in Winton in western Queensland, took two years and involved the Australian Army. More than 300 tonnes of rock were removed from the footprint layer.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**A set of dinosaur bones was kept on a water tank stand in Queensland for 20 years before visiting palaeontologists identified it as the trunk section of a small armoured dinosaur.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**A rare pterosaur jaw was found when a geologist stopped by the side of the road for a "comfort stop".**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Dinosaurs weren't the only animals with big bones! Megafauna fossils-the bones of giant mammals, lizards and birds-have also been found in Australia and these need to be excavated in the same way dinosaur bones are... very carefully!**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Palaeontologists use jackhammers and explosives to excavate dinosaur bones from beach cliffs on the Otway Coast in Victoria. Excavating the iste is dangerous work with rough seas and high tides that can wash away equipment and bury fossils under metres of beach sand. Paleontologists and volunteers must work quickly to remove the rocks bearing the dinosaur bones, while sandbagging and bailing saewater out of the sites before the next tide comes in.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Fossil mammal sites in Australia's far north are so remote that helicopters have been used to collect the rock material.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**In many places, members of the public can join fossil excavations, contact your State Museum for details.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**The study of fossilisation and the history of animal remains is called traphonomy.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**In 1932 a large specimen of Kronosaurus was collected in north Queensland. The rock was so large it had to be blown apart with explsoves and it took nearly 30 years to finish preparing the specimen.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**In World Wars 1 and 2 the cities of Germany, France and England were bombed during air raids. Hundreds of dinosaur fossils were destroyed.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Only a few trace fossils of dinosaurs' tails have been found.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Some fossils are prepared using a special micro-sand blaster called and air-brasive unit. This sprays fine sand which blasts aways the rock surrounding the bone, butit has to be done in an airtight chamber.**
 * <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">**Preparation of a fossil can take much more time than it takes to dig the specimen out of the ground. It took two people two years of full-time work to prepare a skeleton of a small pliosaur, which only took one week to excavate. For fragile bones the work is even slower.**

Name's meaning: Tyrant Lizard King
 * __T.rex information__

Pronounciation: tie-RAN-o-SAWR-us rex

Physical Description: Tyrannosaurus rex had two legs and was 40 feet long. It's jaws were up to 4 feet long and it's teeth grew up to be 13 inches long. Tyrannosaurus rex had bumpy skin like a crocodile. Some scientists think T. Rex could go up to 15 MPH. The T-REX weighed 5-7 tons. It's arms were 3 feet long. T. Rex had a stride length of around 12 to 15 feet.

Young Earth Age: Alive sometime in the last 6000 years.

Old Earth Age: According to old earth scientists, T-Rex lived in the Cretacious Period, about 85-65 million years ago.

Diet: It was a carnivore (meat eating dinosaur).

Fossil locations: T-Rex fossils have been found in north west America.

Classification: tetanurans. **

=ANKYLOSAURUS (Ankylosaurus magniventris)=




 * Name's meaning: "Fused, stiff, or bent Lizard"

Pronounciation: an-Kie-low-Saw-rus

Physical Description: A full grown Ankylosaurus measured about 25-35 feet long, 6 feet wide and 4-5 feet tall. It weighed between 3-4 tons (weight estimates vary greatly for dinosaurs). It was covered with a thick armor (oval shaped plates that were ingrained into it's skin). The armor covered the head, neck, back, tail and even it's eyes. Only it's belly was unprotected by it's armor. It had spikes around its body, and long horns that came out from the back of the head. It's tail looked like a giant club and could be used to attack other dinosaurs. Ankylosaurus had four short legs. The back legs were larger than the front legs.

Young Earth Age: Alive sometime in the last 6000 years.

Old Earth Age: According to old earth scientists, Ankylosaurus lived in the late Cretaceous Period, about 70-65 million years ago.

Diet: It was a herbivore (plant eating dinosaur).

Fossil locations: Ankylosaurus fossils have been found in the western USA (Montana, Wyoming) and Canada (Alberta).

Classification: Ankylosauridae**

=Triceratops (Triceratops horridus)=




 * Name's meaning: "Three Horned Face"

Pronounciation: tri-ser-a-tops

Physical Description: A full grown Triceratops measured about about 30 feet long, 10 feet tall (3 m), and weighed about 6-12 tons (weight estimates vary greatly for dinosaurs). It was about twice the size of a rhinoceros. It had four short legs with three horns on it's face. Two long horns were above it's eyes and one short stubby horn on it's nose. It had flat teeth and a thrill on it's head that protected it's neck. It also had a large tail.

Young Earth Age: Alive sometime in the last 6000 years.

Old Earth Age: According to old earth scientists, Triceratops lived in the late Cretaceous Period, about 65-72 million years ago.

Diet: It was a herbivore (plant eating dinosaur).

Fossil locations: Ankylosaurus fossils have been found in the Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Colorado, and Canada (Alberta, Saskatchewan).

Classification: Ceratopsia**

=Brachiosaurus=




 * Name's meaning: "arm lizard"

Pronounciation: BRAK-ee-oh-sore-us

Physical Description: A full grown Brachiosaurus measured about 100 feet long, and grew to between 40-50 feet tall. It weighed around 50-80 tons (weight estimates vary greatly for dinosaurs). The Brachiosaurus was a huge dinosaur, with long legs and a really long neck. Brachiosaurus had four long legs, it's front legs were longer than it's rear legs. The Brachiosaurus had really long nostrils on the top of it's head.

Young Earth Age: Alive sometime in the last 6000 years.

Old Earth Age: According to old earth scientists, Brachiosaurus lived in the Late Jurassic Period about 150 million years ago.

Diet: It was a herbivore (ate plants).

Fossil locations: Brachiosaurus fossils have been found in various locations in Africa and North America.

Classification: B.Altithorax**

=Oviraptor=


 * Name's meaning: "Egg stealer"

Pronounciation: O-vi-rap-tor

Physical Description: A full grown Oviraptor measured about 7 feet long, and weighed about 55-76 pounds(weight estimates vary greatly for dinosaurs). It had long legs, was fast, and walked on two legs. The Oviraprot had an S-shaped neck, a long tail, and curved claws. It had a parrot-like beak, and a horn like crest.

Young Earth Age: Alive sometime in the last 6000 years.

Old Earth Age: According to old earth scientists, Oviraptor lived in the Cretaceous period, about 88-70 million years ago.

Diet: It was omnivorous (plant and meat eater).

Fossil locations: Oviraptor fossils have been found in Mongolia.

Classification: Saurischia**


 * Here is little information about dinosaurs.

__Allosaurus__ 1. A large meat- eating dinosaur. 2. Up to 38 feet long(12m). 3. 16.5 feet tall(5m). 4. Large, powerful jaws with long, sharp, teeth. 5. Long tail. 6. Long legs. 7. Short arms.

__Torosaurus__ 1. Name means "bull lizard". 2. 8m long and weighed about 7 tonnes. 3. Herbivore(plant-eater). 4. Powerful beak that could deal with tough vegetation. 5. Back legs were longer than its front legs. 6. Skull was 2.6m long including its long crest. 7. Largest known skull of any land animal.

__Scelidosaurus__ 1. The oldest armoured dinosaur. 2. Its tail was long and strong. 3. Its bumpy armour grew in rows.

__Euoplocephalus__ 1. Had leathery skin. 2. Lots of bony lumps and bumps grew out of it. 3. Thick bone covered its head, like a helmet. 4. Big spikes and plates made good armour. 5. They could move easily because its skin could bend between these armoured bands.

__Dinosaur Pictures.__**



The first dinosaur fossil found in Australia was a claw from a therepod(meat- eating) dinosaur, discovered at Cape Patterson, Victoria, by a goverment geologist in 1903. The claw comes from the Cretaceous Period and measures about 6 cm long. In those early days of Australian palaeontology, it was the custom for specimens to be sent to scientists overseas for examination. The fossilised claw was sent to the Natural History Museum in England where it was identified as a type of megalosaur.**
 * __The first dinosaur found in Australia__

The Triassic Period was the beginning of the Age of the Dinosaurs and it was marked by continuing climate and evironmental change. On a global scale, the climate varied from hot and dry at the beginning of the Triassic to warm and wet in the later stages. However, Australia experienced cooler conditions because it was further south than it is now. At this time, Australia was part of the supercontinent known as Gondwanaland and was joined to Africa, South America, Antartica and India. In the early Triassic, erupting volcanoes continually re-shaped the eastern edge of Gondwaland. Inland, vast rivers flowed across endless plains dotted with lakes.**
 * __Triassic Period in Australia(250-205 million years ago)__

Australia still looked very different from the continent we know today. It remained part of the supercontinent of Gondwanaland, but Africa and South America had started to break away. The warm Jurassic climate and massive networks of fast-flowning rivers carrying sediment through deep valleys created a rich covering of vegetation throughout Australia. Thick pine forests with an understorey of ferns and cycads sheltered dinosaurs and other animals.
 * __Jurassic Period in Australia(250-141 million years ago)__

__Creataceous Period- Victoria(120-105 million years ago- SOUTHERN AUSTRALIA)__ The southern part of Australia was well below the Antartic Circle at about 70 degress latitude, causing cooler temperatures, particulary during winter. Elsewhere on Earth it was relatively warm. As Australia and Antartica pulled apart, a broad rift valley formed in the south of the continent and slowly widened over millions of years. Through the long dark winters, dinosaurs and other animals lived in the thick valley forests.**

The muddy southern edge of the inland sea, which had flooded most of Australia at this time, was home to abundant life, both on land and in the water. Numerous slow-flowing streams that emptied into the sea formed a lush estuarine habitat where conifers, ferns and other plants grew in abundance. Fleet-footed carnivorous dinosaurs, large sauropods and flying pterosaurus, and at least two different species of early mammal, coexisted around the estuary. In the cool, shallow waters plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, turtles, crocodiles, fish, sharks and shellfish fed in the rich organic material that flowed out of the streams. Fragments of dinosaur done and teeth, and the remains of other terrestrial animals were mixed with those of river and sea creatures, and the opalised fossils they formed are among the most spectacular in Australia.**
 * __Creataceous Period- New South Wales(105 million years ago- NORTH-WESTERN NEW SOUTH WALES)__

Australia was still well south of the Equator, at latitude 55 degress, but was slowly travelling north and rotating in an anti-clockwise direction. Violent volcanic eruptions and movements in the Earht's crust were tearing eastern Gondwanaland apart. At different times during the Creataceous Period, Eastern Australia was inundated by three separate inland seas. The largest inland sea, about 110 million years ago, covered one-third of the land mass. The shallow waters of the inland seas supported marine reptiles, turtles, sharks and other fish. Giant squid-like animals, such as ammonites, belemnites and nautiloids, darted through the cool waters.**
 * __Creataceous Period- Queensland(110-100 million years ago- NORTH-EASTERN AUSTRALIA)__

Australia had continued its slow drift northward and was now 45 degrees below the Equator. The climate had become warm and moist. As the last inland sea retreated, a vast river plain formed. The mostly flat plain stretched 1600 km long and 800 km wide and was dotted with lakes and rivers.**
 * __Creataceous Period- Winton(98-95 million years ago- WESTERN QUEENSLAND)__

This chart shows when the different kinds of dinosaurs and several other kinds of creatures appeared during the Mesozoic Era. All the dinosaur apparently became extinct at the end of the era, but birds, mammals and other animals continued on to the present day. What happened to the dinosaurs is one of the greatest scientific mysteries.**
 * __The Disappearance of the Dinosaurs__


 * __How did dinosaurs get their names?__**
 * The person who discovers a new kind of dinosaur is entitled to name it. Usually, of course, that person is a scientist. Scientists all over the world long long ago agreed that any kind of newly discovered animal, wheter living or extinvt, must be given a scientific name. The name is usually made up from words taken Greek or Latin, languages with which most scientists are familiar. Therefore a newly discovered dinosaur gets a name that scientists can understand, no matter what language they speak. The name usually tells sometihng about the dinosaur. For example, when one scientist discovered a dinosaur that had a large, curved, bony sharp claw on each hind foot, he named the dinosaur Deinonychus(dy- hon- NIHK- uhs), or "terrible claw". Or, the name may simply tell where the fossil was found. A dinosaur whose skeleton was found in Shantung, China, was named Shantungosaurus(shan-tung-uh-SAWR-uhs), or "Shantung Lizard".**

Dinosaurs belonged to the group of animals called reptiles. They have been extinct for 65 million years.
 * __What were dinosaurs?__

Dinosaurs were vertebrates, which means they had a skeleton with a backbone. They breathed and, had scaky skin, laid hard-shelled eggs and lived on land. They walked with an upright gait, which allowed them to move faster than those with their legs at the sides of their bodies, like their close relatives turtles, crocodiles and lizards.**


 * Some dinosaurs were ectothermic, which means thay depended on the sun for their body temperature. Others were probably endothermic, which means they had a constant body temperature and may have had a covering of fur feathers to maintain this temperature.

There were two types of dinosaurs which are classified depending on the structure of their hip bones. There were saurischian or lizard- hipped dinosaurs, which were both meat and plant-eaters and included theropods and sauropods. Ornithischian or bird-hipped dinosaurs were plant eaters and included ornithopods, ankylosaurus, stegosaurus and ceratopians.**

Prosauropods** Ornithopods**
 * //__The Dinosaur Families__//**
 * __Saurischian Order "lizard hips"__
 * Melanosaurs
 * Plateosaurs
 * Thecodontosaurs
 * Mussaurs
 * Theropods**
 * Tyrannosaurs
 * Spinosaurs
 * Segnosaurs
 * Megalosaurs
 * Dromaeosaurs
 * Ornithosuchians
 * Deinonychosaurs
 * Ornithomimids
 * Procompsodnathids
 * Coelurosaurs
 * Sauropods**
 * Brachiosaurs
 * Camarasaurs
 * Mamenchisaurs
 * Atlantosaurs
 * __Ornithiscian Order "bird hips"__
 * Hadrosaurs
 * Iguanodoms
 * Fabrosaurs
 * Pachycephalosaurs
 * Heterodontosaurs
 * Hypsilophodonts
 * Stegasaurs**
 * Stegasaurs
 * Ankylosaurs**
 * Nodosaurs
 * Scelidosaurs
 * Ankylosaurs
 * Ceratopsians**
 * Ceratopsians
 * Psittacosaurs
 * Protoceratopsians


 * __How dinosaurs became fossils__

1.

2.

3.

4.** A Present-day Cycad(Cycas Revoluta) A Present-day Ginkgo(Ginkgo Biloba) A Present-day Conifer(Araucaria Araucana) An Extinct Fern(Pachypteris sp.) An Extinct Cycad(Cycas sp.)**
 * 1) A dinosaur dies and sinks to lake bottom.
 * 2) Flesh decays and bones are slowly covered by sand.
 * 3) The sand becomes a rock over millions of years.
 * 4) The rock wears away, uncovering the fossil bones.
 * __Triassic Plants__

A Present-day Fern(Dicksonia Antartica) A Present-day Horsetail(Equisetum Arvense) A Present-day Conifer(Taxus Baccata) An Extinct Conifer An Extinct Redwood(Sequoiadendron sp.)
 * __Jurassic Plants__

__Cretaceous Plants__ A Present-day Conifer(Pinus Muricata) A Present-day Decidous Tree(Magnolia sp.) An Extinct Fern(Sphenopteris Latiloba) An Extinct Ginkgo(Gingko Pluripartita) An Extinct Deciduous Tree(Cercidyphyllum sp.)**