Unit 4 Bio Review Paleontologist studies ancient organisms Paleobiologist someone who studies the lives of ancient organisms o Their anatomy physiology behavior and ecology Thomas Jefferson father of paleontology First records of dinosaurs were in china Know picture of sir Richard Owen First proper name of dinosaur o Scrotum humanum o Actually thigh bone of meat eating dino megalosaurus People just thought it was a giant crocodile First described herbivorous dinosaur o Iguanodon lizard tooth o Unlike megalosaurus it did cause an enormous amount of excitement Baron George Cuvier Robert Bakker o Famous for his work on mosasaurus showing extinction of species can occur o Fueled by his radical ideas o Deinonychus helped change our perceptions about dinosaurs o He said dinosaurs were agile and active not sluggish and boring o 3 or more sacral vertebrae perforate acetabulae 3 main fingers o Very closely related to pleseosaurs Characteristics loch ness monster Ornithischians vs saurischians o Hip structure Ornithischians bird shaped hips Saurischians lizard shaped hips o Know what they look like Age of dinosaurs o Showed up 238 million years ago o Went extinct 65 5 million years ago as well as 40 80 of all life o Climate was warm arid like Florida in the middle latitudes and cool and rainy at the poles Finding Dinosaurs o Best isotope to age dinosaurs Uranium 235 Lead 207 o Found in sedimentary rocks o Closest place to Florida to find Dinosaur fossils is Georgia o Earliest members of major dinosaurs were small o Terrestrial found on land NOT oceans Remember these specifically o Stupidest Stegosaurus o Smartest Troodon o Tallest 56ft Sauroposeidon head would be higher than top of class o Smallest 7oz o Fastest Ornithomimids o Longest Seismosaurs head would be beyond back of classroom Dino names o Archaeopteryx first bird o Heterodontosaurus dentition is unique o Ceratopsian parrot like beak inspired Greek legends of griffin o Hadrosaurs have most info known about them because they were in herds common gregarious eggs found o Pachyrhinosaurus boss on nose theory was base for enormous horn o Pachycephalosaurus fought by head on ramming and flank butting o Ceratosaur gap between front and back teeth mistaken for venom groove o Coelophysis ate crocodiles o Theropod dinosaur with scissor hands may have eaten plants Birds evolved from them Teeth have serrated edge o More important to know features than names o Oviraptor protoceratops egg stealer o Spinosaurus destroyed in British bombing o Cerapoda gap between front and back teeth o Gigantosaurus larger than T Rex Dinosaur Features o Dental battery 100 s of tightly adjoining teeth Enamel on one side of teeth helps sharpen them o Osteoderm bones found in the skin o Endocasts casts of brain cavity Used to see what sense they relied on T Rex o 2 fingers not 3 o Good sense of smell Large olfactory bulbs o Lizard hips o Tracks show they did not drag their tails o They could only amble not run o Sometimes predators sometimes scavengers Engineering o Computerized finite element modeling Models to see bite forces Example crocs highest bite force is 3700lbs Extinction o Theories Volcanism Sea levels dropped o Growth curves show dinosaurs grew like marsupials and faster than reptiles Impact of asteroid Chicxulub Crater in the Gulf of Mexico Primary Theory Know name of crater KT Extinction Event 40 80 of all life forms went extinct Problem with theories animals like frogs and crocs survived Dinosauroid o Human like and dinosaur like creature o Theory that if dinosaurs had not gone extinct they would have evolved into a creature that looks similar to humans Dino s new look o Fossils showed they had feathers o Gliding dinosaurs had four wings o Birds evolved from Theropod dinosaurs o Bone structure blend of avian reptilian traits o Their sex is still not know sexual dimorphism Theory of vertebrae can determine sex Additional Terms o Coprolite dino feces o Encephalization quotient how much brain compared to mass o Over Splitting giving multiple names to one species more than their really are Brontosaurus same as Apatosaurus Know how to use a Cladogram
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