15 facts about dinos

15 cool things about dinosaurs

dinosaurs are a group of reptiles that appeared in the Triassic period between 243 and 233.23 million years. They became the terrestrial vertebrates after the jurassic-Triassic extinction event.   

1. Scientist Richard Owens coined the term dinosaur in the 1800s. it means "terrible lizard".

2. Mamenchisaurs could stretch its neck up to 30 feet while a Giraffe's neck only stretches up to 6 feet long. Mamenchisaurus was first discovered in 1952 on the construction site of the Yitang Highway in Sichuan, China. Mamenchisaurus is a sauropod dinosaur genus including several species, known for their remarkably long necks which made up half the total body length. It is known from numerous species which ranged in time from 160 to 145 million years ago, from the Oxfordian age of late Jurassic Period in China.

3. Dinosaurs lived on the earth 160 million years while humans lived on the earth for 200 thousand years.

4. During the late 19th-century scientist OC Marsh and Edward drinker cope named more dinosaurs than anyone in history(140). While Marsh's own collectors headed east for the winter, Reed sent carloads of bones by rail to Marsh throughout 1877. Marsh described and named dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, and Apatosaurus in the December 1877 issue of the American Journal of Science.

5. Most dinosaurs could swim. The discovery of a giant fossilized tail belonging to the theropods spinosaurus aegyptiacus suggests these huge predators were aquatic animals, after all, using tail-propelled locomotion to swim and hunt in rivers millions of years ago.

6. The Velociraptor could go up to speeds of 25 miles an hour, it could have kept up with a slow-moving car. Velociraptor is a genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived approximately 75 to 71 million years ago during the latter part of the Cretaceous Period

7. The Tyrannosaurus rex could gulp down 100 pounds of meat in one bite. Tyrannosaurus is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex often called T. rex or colloquially T-Rex, is one of the most well-represented of the large theropods. Tyrannosaurus lived throughout what is now western North America, on what was then an island continent known as Laramidia.

8. All the dinosaurs walked on toes. Most of the dinosaurs had only three toes for walking or running. We see the results in former muddy or sandy areas as dinosaurs trackways complete with bird-like footprints.

9. Sinornithosaurus, a feathered turkey-sized dinosaur, might have had a venomous bite. Sinornithosaurus is a genus of feathered dromaeosaurid dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period of the Yixian Formation in what is now China. It was the fifth non–avian feathered dinosaur genus discovered by 1999.

10. One tooth is all that paleontologists need to identify a dinosaur. Some dinosaurs, like gallimimus, do not have teeth. On the other end of the spectrum, Tyrannosaurus rex had 50 to 60 solid cone-shaped teeth as big as bananas.

11. More than 80 percent of all dinosaur fossils are discovered by mistake.

12. On average a new species of dinosaur is found every week.

13. Shantungosaurus had 1000 teeth, likely more than any other dinosaur. Shantungosaurus, meaning "Shandong Lizard", is a genus of saurolophine hadrosaurid dinosaurs found in the Late Cretaceous Wangshi Group of the Shandong Peninsula in China, containing a single species, Shantungosaurus giganteus.

14. A T-Rex was about the size of a chicken when it hatched.

15. Only about 2,000 complete dinosaur fossils exist in the world.