Dinosaur Final Study Guide Paleontologist someone who studies ancient organisms It has made key contributions to our understanding of the world Palenontology is important because with regard to scientific literacy since for many children dinosaurs are their first exposure to scientific concepts Paleobiology the study of ancient life Scrotum humanum First proper name given to a dinosaur Prior to the 1800 s finds of dinosaur tracks from england were commonplace French Canadian explorer Jean Bapiste L Heureux father of the buffalo Mastodons furry extinct elephants One here in Wakulla Springs Thomas Jefferson was a fossil fanatic earned the nickname Mr Mammoth He has bones in the white house and some consider him a Founding Father of paleontology Mosasaurus not a dinosaur but a seagoing relative of todays monitor lizards such as a Komodo dragon Jean Leopold Nicolas Frederick Cuvier Baron George Cuvier very influential man and was considered a genius people for the first time gave serious consideration to the possibility that animals can and have gone extinct Reverend William Buckland clergyman is credited with describing the first scientifically valid dinosaur Megalosaurus big reptile Gideon Mantell found the teeth and bones of an animal he would later name Iguanodon iguana tooth their teeth scaled up to elephant size this was the first described herbivorous dinosaur Sir Richard Owen He concluded that the dinosaurs were a unique and formerly unrecognized reptilian group and named them Reptiles are scaly skinned terrestrialized living on land animals that lay hard shelled eggs Dinosauria fearfully great reptiles Characteristics Giant Possessing upright stances Non aquatic Having more than two sacral vertebrae backbones fused in the hip region more related to mammals than living reptiles Dinosaurs are Archosaurian reptiles crocodilian and pterosaurs dinosauromorphs Archosaurian s crocodiles pterosaurs dinosaurs all are distinguished by the following attributes teeth in sockets erect posture due to interned ball on the femur Dinosaurs have three key features three or more sacral vertebrae hands with three main fingers perforante acetabulae The first scientifically reported remains of dinosaur tracks are from where 1800 by a schoolboy in MA 12 15 feet tall ostrich like birds Two major groupings of dinosaurs are Ornithischinans bird hips with pelvic bones shaped like those of birds Saurischians with pelvises like lizards lizard hips Louis Dollo He was the first person that we can call a dinosaur paleobiologist a person interested in the lives of dinosaurs their ecosystems etc Deinchonychus terrible claw When did Dinosaurs live 238 million years ago referred to the Age of Dinosaurs Three major divisions to the Mesozoic Era called periods 1st Triassic Period The oldest dinosaurs show up midway through this period 2nd Jurassic Period this was the time of the very large dinosaurs 3rd Cretaceous Period the dinosaurs went extinct 65 54 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period The best isotopes for dating ricks fro the Age of Dinosaurs Uranium 235 breaks down Lead 207 Half Life the amount of time it takes for half of the original material to break down Climate in the age of the Dinosaurs arid in the equatorial regions much life florida in the middle latitudes closer to the poles it was cool wet and rainy like Seattle or British Columbia Plate tectonics in the triassic period all were adjoined into one super continent known as Pangea Plate Tectonics The continental movements are driven by volcanic seafloor spreading in the oceans Because the world was much warmer during the Age of Dinosaurs there were no ice caps at the poles Consequently there was more free water in the oceans than there is today and a greater potion of the continents were covered by water Gymnosperms such as pine trees conifers cypress trees cycads Angiosperms flowering plant fast growing disturbance tolerant showed up halfway through the cretaceous period in arid equatorial regions The world became more vegetated with ground cover all over and closed forests of deciduous trees became abundant Early crocodilians not like those today they were small agile terrestrial predators Deinosuchus terror crocodile Turtles during the Age of Dinosaurs the first ones from the triassic period were fully terrestrial and even had teeth Ichthyosaurs reptiles that looked and swam like dolphins 40 feet long and had gigantic eyes one foot in diameter Plesiosaurs long necked the supposed loch ness monster bodies like sea turtles and swam like sea turtles flying through the water Mosasaurs animals that Culvier used in support of his extinction theory Sea going relatives of living monitor lizards like the Komodo Dragon 50 feet long Pterosaurs bat like largest known was Quetzalcoatlus What are mammals Appeared about the same time as the dinosaurs in the late triassic period They were initially rat or weasel like and mouse to opossum sized and for the most part remained so throughout the entire 173 million year tenure of the dinosaurs It is important to realize that there is another category of dinosaurs fossils known as trace fossils Trace fossils primary means by which paleontologists learn about dinosaur biology To become fossilized remains of the animal must be buried fairly rapidly under sediments such as those from rivers windblown sand or volcanic ash Sedmientary rocks rocks formed from sediments sandstones and shales Igneous rocks rocks formed from volcanoes Metamorphic rocks sedimentary or igneous rocks that have been deformed by the pressures of the earth Usually fossil dinosaur bones are composed of the original calcium phosphates the hard mineral in bones Animals only rarely become fossilized A case in point is that most dinosaurs are known only from single partially complete specimens Bandlands places where rocks of these types are exposed and ideally where there is little vegetation so one can see a lot of exposures Saurischians lizard like hip bones it includes meat eaters like the T Rex Ornithischians hips like those of living birds the group includes the herbivorous armored dinosaurs the horned dinosaurs the duck bills and the bizarre head ramming pachycephalosaurs bird shaped hips a beak a nutcracker jaw point All dinosaurs were not giants and the earliest forms were small Thyreophora shield bearers the armored dinosaurs Distinguishing features armor in their skin referred to as osteoderms bony bumps like on the back of
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