Just as most dinosaurs are believed to be wild and mean, most are. Unlike the wild and ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Velociraptor, is a smaller, agile dinosaur. The Brontosaurus can be found with the bigger, more gentle dinosaurs. The Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, and Brontosaurus differ greatly in their body structure, diet, and discovery.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex was a very large dinosaur. Measuring 50 feet long, the Tyrannosaurus stood over 20 feet tall. The head of the Tyrannosaurus was five feet long and filled with large teeth that were seven inches long each (Benton 125). Having a very large skull put a tremendous strain on its body, so to counterbalance its weight, the tyrannosaurus had a strong attachment of backbone to pelvis which allowed its body to pivot at its hip (Wilford 142). With its body balanced right, the Tyrannosaurus walked on two legs, and it had two very short arms.
The Tyrannosaurus was one of the most feared dinosaurs. The word Tyrannosaurus means “tyrant reptile”. Since the
Tyrannosaurus Rex was a meat-eater, its teeth were shaped in zig-zag form which allowed it to cut through meat like a steak knife (Benton 161). It mainly relied on its strength when catching prey. Because it could not swim, many of its prey would run for shelter into water. Also, the Tyrannosaurus Rex was able to take big breaths due to lots of lung capacity, but it tired easily and could not put up much of a chase when its prey ran. (Monatersky 287).
The Tyrannosaurus Rex was an exciting discovery. It was found during the Bone Wars, a period when Paleontology was very popular and competitive. It is believed to have been discovered by Robert Plot during the 1800’s (Benton 128). The Tyrannosaurus lived during the Late Cretaceous Period (Benton 124). This dinosaur was first believed to be cold-blooded, but now many scientists believe that it was warm-blooded and possibly evolved from birds.
Although very small, the Velociraptor was very agile. The Velociraptor was six feet long and four feet tall. This dinosaur was lightly built which allowed it to run fast and jump swiftly. Unlike most dinosaurs, the Velociraptor had long arms which allowed them to be more useful (Benton 126). On the foot of the Velociraptor was a three inch claw which w...
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...aves, grass, and other plants. Using its long neck, it would stretch to the top of trees and eat the leaves off the branches. The jaw muscles were very strong, and were used to strip bark off trees and to break branches (Benton 163). Its mouth was filled with 2000 teeth which were large and bowl-shaped (Wilford 84).
Many types of Brontosaurus’s have been discovered. Believed to be the first dinosaur ever discovered, a large skull and a leg were found (Wilford 86). These body parts were found in the western part of North America, and many, to this day, are still found here (“Apatasaurus” 1). Many other types of Brontosauruss have been found and are the most easily found today.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, and the Brontosaurus are different in all aspects of life including body structure, diet, and discovery. The Tyrannosaurus Rex was the meanest and most brutal of all, while the Velociraptor was smart and illusive. The Brontosaurus was a more gentle dinosaur, even though it was very large. Each one of the dinosaurs discussed were very interesting and have given a large contribution to science and its understanding.
Ceratopsians and Pachycephalosaurs are closely related in their characteristics. Ceratopsians processed a saddle-shaped boney frill that extended from the skull to the neck and typically had horns over the nose and eyes. The most popular was the triceratops, which could reach over 26 feet and weigh in excess of twelve metric tons. Their frills served as two major functions. It protected the vulnerable neck from being harmed. The second major function that the frill provided was due to the fact that the frill contained a network of blood vessels on its underside, which were used as a means to get rid of excess heat. The Pachycephalosaurs were considered to be bipedal. They were also found to have thick skulls, flattened bodies, and tail that were covered in an array of body rods. Pachycephalosaurs were thought to have been more than fifteen feet long and processed a skull that was surrounded by a rounded dome of solid bone. It was thought that they used their heads in combat or mating contests, but that was disproved fairly recently, which I will discuss later in the paper. Both Ceratopsians and Pachycephalosaurs were “bird-hipped” and both of these suborders contained a backwards pubic bone. Both were Marginocephilia, or “fringed heads”, which is one of three clads under the Orinthiscia order. They were also herbivore dinosaurs that inherited their fringe at the back of the skull from earlier ancestors.(2) Their classi...
Raymond Rogers, David Krause, and Kristina Curry Rogers found significant evidence that the carnivorous dinosaur, Majungatholus atopus, was also a cannibal (Krause et al 2003). The dinosaur remains of the Majungatholus atopus were dated in the late Cretaceous Period from 65 to 70 million years ago. The Majungatholus atopus inhabited the plains of the northwestern Madagascar and bones and teeth continue to be found throughout the Maevarno Formation and within the channel-belt deposits of the Anembalemba Member. The Majungatholus is commonly found, along with other vertebra taxa in ‘bonebeds’ in the Madagascar area, which is probably the reason this dinosaur is still preserved. The trio discovered teeth marks in many bones of the ribs, ilium, and precaudal axial skeleton co...
The Thescelosaurus was a “bird-hipped” dinosaur or an ornithischian ( Russell 2). This herbivore lived near the end of the Cretaceous period, about one million years before the conclusion of the dinosaur era. Thescelosaurus was about the size of a short-legged pony, according to paleontologist Dr. Dale Russell and was native to North America from Wyoming up to Alberta, Canada.
As time progressed, Ichthyosaurs transitioned their body like features from a lizard-shaped body plan to a fish-shaped one through the early and middle Triassic periods. In 1927, the first bone fragments were foun...
The main group of animals that went extinct during this time, leaving smaller reptiles, birds, and mammals, were the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs dominated the land and ranged from being smaller than a rooster, to being greater than the size of fifteen adult elephants. There were herbivores, carnivores, insectivores, omnivores, and detritivores. Herbivores would often live in herds, like deer or cows. Large carnivores, like the tyrannosaurs were usually solitary hunters and smaller carnivores, like the raptors --Creatures around the size of a person, with razor sharp teeth, slashing claws, and large brains, Would hunt in sophisticated packs. One of the dinosaurs defining characteristics was that they took time to take care of their young, protecting them from predators and making sure they got enough food to eat; this differs from most reptiles (Digging into Dinosaurs 4-5). For example today’s largest lizard, the komodo dragon, will eat its own young if the young do not get away, so they have to hide up in the trees. Dinosaurs were not even buil...
9 Brett-Surman, M K, et al. Top 10 Misconceptions about Dinosaurs. [online] Available at http://www.nmnh.si.edu/paleo/faq.html
The American alligators have many physical characteristics. Their size ranges from six to twelve feet. A full grown male can weigh up to one thousand and two hundred pounds. The American alligator has a long round snout with nostrils at the end. An alligator has two eyes towards the top of its head. Also alligators have a long thin body that has four legs and a long tail (EDIS, 2009)
My partner and I researched the amazing dinosaur called the velociraptor. Velociraptors are a dinosaur that has many similar features as a common turkey. For example, this dinosaurs had feathers, but not covered completely like a turkey. They are about 2 and a half feet tall with hollow bones. Like most birds, they have a wishbone and talon feet. They also had quill knobs. They couldn’t fly because they were too small, but they used them to hunt. They had long thin tall to help them balance when they were running. Their strong legs helped the run up to 40 miles per hour! Velociraptors were known as one of the top ten most dangerous dinosaurs in their time (the late cretaceous period) because of their sharp claws and sharp curved teeth. These dinosaurs were great hunters, their claw would puncture the flesh of their prey but not rip through it, yet their teeth would. Their teeth and claws helped
Dinosaurs held their own, according to studies, for at least 150 million years. After becoming extinct and finding fossilized remains dinosaurs have become a way in which we not only measure the changes that have occurred as the planet evolved, but also how we express ourselves today.
you have placed plants and animals from the Cretaceous period in a park named Jurassic.
The dinosaurs were brought to life using ground breaking CGI by the “wizards” at Industrial Light & Magic and life-size animatronics by Stan Winston. Each frame the digital dinosaurs were in would take hours to render but the results speak for themselves. Stan’s team created animatronics for several of the film’s main dinosaurs. The T-Rex animatronic alone stood 20 feet tall and weighed 17,500 pounds (Jurassic Park (film), 1993). Animatronics were also created for the film’s triceratops, velociraptors and dilophosaurus. To give the dinosaurs their voice, samples from around the animal kingdom were combined to create unique blending of sounds for all the main dinosaurs. To make sure the audience would hear the dinosaurs as he intended, Steven Spielberg invested in the creation of a new company dedicated to digital surround formats called DTS. This brought digital sound into theatres in a way like never before. All of these innovations earned the film three Oscars for best sound, best sound effect editing and best visual effects.
...ll. This group still remained successful during the Jurassic period and had a wide geopraphic distribution. Other reptiles evolved to not only live on land, but to fly. The earliest known birds appeared during this period; Archaeoteryx being the first to be considered the intermediate between the birds and predatory dinosaurs. It is debated on whether this ancient bird could actually fly or merely glid from tree to tree. Carnosaurus, meaning “meat-eating” is another group of dinosaurs that ruled during the Jurassic. With such large herbivorous prey animals, the correlation of these large predators make sense of why they were so common. An Allosaurus was one of the most common Carnosaurs in North America. Upon finding numerous intact skeletons in fossil beds, it has been reported that the Allosaurus was superficially similar to the later evolving Tyrannosaurus rex.
Until recently, scientists believed the chances of finding a fossilized dinosaur heart were extremely slim. The heart belonged to a 66 million year old dinosaur found in Harding County in Northwestern South Dakota. The dinosaur, found in 1993, weighed over 650 pounds and was 13 feet long. The dinosaur was in fairly good condition with the exception of the left side of the skeleton. The small, plant-eating Thescelosaurus, nicknamed ‘Willo’ has been acquired by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Thescelosaurus was an ornithischian, or "bird-hipped," dinosaur that lived in the latter stage of the Cretaceous period. This was approximately 1 million years before the end of the dinosaur era. Native to North America, its range extended from the northern United States up into Canada. Since using the 3-D software to reveal Willo's heart, scientists have also used it to create 3-D images of the fossil's skull, and of remains from other dinosaurs in the museum's collection. (Fisher, Paul)
The Triceratops were very interesting dinosaurs. They were very smart and strategic. They moved in herds and used mating calls. They were very complex. They had an interesting body shape that gave them an advantage towards their predators. They were known for their horns and parrot-like beaks. They were herbivores that lived in North America. Triceratopses were very interesting.
Norell, Mark, Lowell Dingus, and Eugene S. Gaffney. "Why Did Nonavian Dinosaurs Become Extinct?" Discovering Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Lessons of Prehistory. Berkeley: U of California, 1995. N. pag. Print.