BSC 1005 Unit 4 Study Guide Chapter 1 An Introduction to Terrible Lizards and the Science of Dinosaur Paleontology Paleontologist someone who studies ancient organisms Paleobiology the study of ancient life The first written accounts for dinosaurs were done in China Scotum humanum was the first proper scientific name given to a dinosaur It is the distal end of a megalosaur thigh bone Baron George Cuvier The first person to consider that animals can and have gone extinct He did this by researching the Mosasaurus 40 foot long sea monster Reverend William Buckland credited with describing the first scientifically valid dinosaur in 1824 Megalosaurus big reptile First valid dinosaur Reptiles scaly skinned terrestrialized living on land animals that lay hard Iguanadon Iguana tooth First described herbivorus dinosaur Sir Richard Owen recognized dinosaurs as reptiles shelled eggs and shows a distinctive arrangement of the skull bones Dinosauria fearfully great reptiles Archosaurian reptiles crocodilians and pterosaurs extinct flying reptiles and dinosauromorphs extinct dinosaur like reptiles Archosaurians Crocodiles pterosaurs dinosaurs and the other Archosaurians such as the dinosaurmorphs They are distinguished by the following attributes teeth in sockets hinge like ankles erect posture Three key features of Dinosaurs Three or more sacral vertebrae Hands with three main fingers Two major groups of Dinosaurs Ornithischians with pelvic bones shaped like those of birds Saurischians with pelves like lizards Preforate acetabulae Louis Dollo the first person that we can call a paleobiologist a person interested in the lives of dinosaurs their ecosystems etc Robert Bakker took the Deinonychus story and ran with it This is what started the dinosaur renaissance Chapter 2 The Age of Dinosaurs The very first dinosaurs were small bipedal carnivorous animals that first show up in the fossil record 238 million years ago during a time known as the Mesozoic era This time span is referred to as the Age of Dinosaurs There are three major divisions to the Mesozoic Era that are called periods 1 The First period is the Triassic Period The oldest dinosaurs show up 2 The second period is the Jurassic Period This was the time of the very midway through this period largest dinosaurs 3 The Cretaceous period is the final period It is the time that the T rex ruled The dinosaurs went extinct 65 54 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period What do we use to know how old dinosaurs are Uranium 235 What does it turn into Lead Its half life is the amount of time it takes for half of the original material to break down Climate in the age of the dinosaurs arid in equatorial regions in middle latitudes and wet and rainy close to the poles Plate Tectonics In the Triassic Period all the continents were adjoined into one super continent known as Pangea Throughout the Age of Dinosaurs the continents moved apart This was known as Plate Tectonics which was when the continental movements are driven by volcanic seafloor spreading in the oceans During the age of the dinosaurs there were no ice caps at the poles So there was more free water in the oceans than there is today and a greater portion of the continents covered by water Floras in the Dinosaur Era 1 During Triassic and Jurassic Periods Larger Gymnosperms There was less ground cover than there is today 2 During Cretaceous Period Angiosperms flowering plants The world became more vegetated with ground cover all over and closed forests of deciduous trees became abundant Living with Dinosaurs 1 Crocodilians The earliest ones were not like those today They were small agile terrestrial predators Deinosuchus terror crocodile 2 Turtles The first ones from the Triassic Period were fully terrestrial and 3 Sea Monsters were ichthyosaurs the reptiles that looked and swam like even had teeth dolphins Long necked plesiosaurs Mosasaurs long lizards foot wing span 4 Ptreosaurs Dinosaurs with bat like wings The biggest ones with a 36 5 Mammals they 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 Finding Dinosaurs and how can I become fossilized 1 Fossils are the evidence of ancient life 2 Trace Fossils traces of ancient life The primary means by which paleontologists learn about dinosaur biology 3 Can be fossilized by rivers windblown or volcanic ash 4 Usually fossil dinosaur bones are composed of the original calcium phosphates the hard minerals in bones Chapter 3 The Ornithischia Plated Dummies and walking Tanks The Ornithischia The first Ornthischians appeared in the Middle Triassic Period were small bipedal animals 1 They had Bird shaped hips 2 A beak to crop plants 3 A Nutcracker jaw point An early offshoot of the ornithischian lineage was the thyreophora shield bearers the armored dinosaurs Distinguishing feature the possession of armor in their skin These bones in the skin are referred to as osteoderms Advanced thyreophorans included two major groups the ankylosaurs and the stegosaurs 1 Stegosaurs Enormous plates and two sets of spikes on it s tail 2 Ankylosauria fused lizards the dinosaur tanks Endocasts How we know about the brain size of some dinosaurs Chapter 4 Cerapoda The Big Ducks Cerapoda the spike thumbed iguaodonts the duck bills the bone heads and the horned dinosaurs Distinguishing Characteristic A gap between the front and back teeth There are two groups of th caerapoda Ornithopoda and Marginocephalia Ornithopod bird feet Distinguishing characteristic Front teeth well below the cheek teeth An early ornithopod group was the heterodontosaurs different sized teeth lizards Sexy dinosaurs Currently we do not know how to differentiate between the sexes for any dinosaur species Advanced ornithopods include the hypsilophodonts iguanodonts and hadrosaurs Key features Criss crossed back and tail tendons hypsilophodonts had a very precise slicing chopping dentition Extremely advanced ornithopods A flared out snout with no front teeth Spike Iguanodonts were extremely advanced ornithopods that did not have grinding dentition but were unique in their possession What dinosaur has a duck bill Hadrosaurs self sharping Hard tissue on one side a soft tissue on the otherside Key Very broad duck like bills and Dental batteries composed of hundreds of tightly adjoining teeth Sexual Dimorphism
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