Dinosaur facts and movie fiction

9:18 pm Dinosaurs, kids

We see all sorts of movies with caveman battling giant dinosaurs. I was wondering if that was true so I looked it up. Here are the questions and answers about facts and movie fiction involving dinosaurs. I read all this and found out a bunch of stuff I did not know like there was no grass because it had not evolved yet.





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Did people and dinosaurs live at the same time?

No! After the dinosaurs died out, nearly 65 million years passed before people appeared on Earth. However, small mammals (including shrew-sized primates) were alive at the time of the dinosaurs. Many scientists who study dinosaurs (vertebrate paleontologists) now think that birds are direct descendants of one line of carnivorous dinosaurs, and some consider that they in fact represent modern living dinosaurs. This theory remains under discussion and shows that there is still much we don’t know about dinosaurs.



When did dinosaurs become extinct?

Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago (at the end of the Cretaceous Period), after living on Earth for about 165 million years. If all of Earth time from the very beginning of the dinosaurs to today were compressed into 365 days (1 calendar year), the dinosaurs appeared January 1 and became extinct the third week of September. (Using this same time scale, the Earth would have formed approximately 18.5 years earlier.) By comparison, people (Homo sapiens) have been on earth only since December 31 (New Year’s eve). The dinosaurs’ long period of dominance certainly makes them unqualified successes in the history of life on Earth.




What did dinosaurs eat?

Some dinosaurs ate lizards, turtles, eggs, or early mammals. Some hunted other dinosaurs or scavenged dead animals. Most, however, ate plants (but not grass, which hadn’t evolved yet). Rocks that contains dinosaur bones also contain fossil pollen and spores that indicate hundreds to thousands of types of plants existed during the Mesozoic Era. Many of these plants had edible leaves, including evergreen conifers (pine trees, redwoods, and their relatives), ferns, mosses, horsetail rushes, cycads, ginkos, and in the latter part of the dinosaur age flowering (fruiting) plants. Although the exact time of origin for flowering plants is still uncertain, the last of the dinosaurs certainly had fruit available to eat.

Did all the dinosaurs live together, and at the same time?

Dinosaur communities were separated by both time and geography. The “age of dinosaurs” (the Mesozoic Era) included three consecutive geologic time periods (the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods). Different dinosaur species lived during each of these three periods. For example, the Jurassic dinosaur Stegosaurus already had been extinct for approximately 80 million years before the appearance of the Cretaceous dinosaur Tyrannosaurus. In fact, the time separating Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus is greater than the time separating Tyrannosaurus and you. At the beginning of dinosaur history (the Triassic Period), there was one supercontinent on Earth (Pangea). Many dinosaur types were widespread across it. However, as Pangea broke apart, dinosaurs became scattered across the globe on separate continents, and new types of dinosaurs evolved separately in each geographic area.

trex.jpgWere dinosaurs warm-blooded?

Scientists have conflicting opinions on this subject. Some paleontologists think that all dinosaurs were “warm-blooded” in the same sense that modern birds and mammals are: that is, they had rapid metabolic rates. Other scientists think it unlikely that any dinosaur could have had a rapid metabolic rate. Some scientists think that very big dinosaurs could have had warm bodies because of their large body size, just as some sea turtles do today. It may be that some dinosaurs were warm-blooded. The problem is that it is hard to find evidence that unquestionably shows what dinosaur metabolisms were like.



Why did some dinosaurs grow so big?

Paleontologists don’t know for certain, but perhaps a large body size protected them from most predators, helped to regulate internal body temperature, or let them reach new sources of food (some probably browsed treetops, as giraffes do today). No modern animals except whales are even close in size to the largest dinosaurs; therefore, paleontologists think that the dinosaurs’ world was much different from the world today and that climate and food supplies must have been favorable for reaching great size.

How long could a dinosaur live?

Animal lifespans relate in part to their body size and in part to their type of metabolism. Dinosaur lifespans probably varied in length from tens of years to hundreds of years. Their possible maximum age can be estimated from the maximum lifespans of modern reptiles, such as the 66-year lifespan of the common alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) and the impressive lifespan of a Black Seychelles Tortoise (Geochelone (Aldabrachelys) sumeirei). One specimen of this now-extinct species, which was an adult when captured, lived a record 152 years in captivity (1766-1918) and had an accidental death. These estimates, based on lifespans of cold-blooded animals, would be too long if dinosaurs had metabolisms more similar to modern birds and mammals.



How fast could dinosaurs walk or run?

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Estimates of dinosaur speeds vary because several different methods are used to calculate them. One recent estimate suggests that an average person might have been able to to outrun an adult Tyrannosaurus (although you probably would not volunteer to try). The two basic approaches for estimating dinosaur speed are comparing to recorded speeds of modern animals of similar body size and build, and measuring distances between fossil footprints in a trackway and using these distances to calculate estimated speed. Walking-speed estimates for medium-sized bipedal (two-legged) dinosaurs vary from 4 kph to 6 kph, and peak running-speed estimates vary from 37 kph to 88 kph. The highest figure (88.6 kph) is the same as the peak speed of the currently fastest land animals, such as the North American pronghorn “antelope” (Antilocapra americana), and very probably is too high.

and the biggest question that no one seems to have an answer to..

Why did the dinosaurs die out?

There are dozens of theories to explain a probable cause or causes. Throughout the Mesozoic Era, individual dinosaur species were evolving and becoming extinct for various reasons. The unusually massive extinction at the end of the Cretaceous exterminated the last of the dinosaurs, the flying reptiles, and the large swimming reptiles, as well as many other marine animals. There is now widespread evidence that a meteorite impact was at least the partial cause for this extinction. Impact craters are visible on most planets in our solar system. A spectacular example of this was witnessed in 1994, when Jupiter was struck by a series of cometary fragments. Some of these impact blasts were larger than the Earth’s diameter. Other factors such as extensive release of volcanic gases, climatic cooling (with related changes in ocean currents and weather patterns), sea-level change, low reproduction rates, poison gases from a comet, or changes in the Earth’s orbit or magnetic field may have contributed to this extinction event.



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