Interesting facts about dinosaurs. The largest dinosaur. Dinosaur eggs

Interesting facts about dinosaurs leave no oneindifferent, as they allow you to learn something new about the lizards that inhabited our planet millions of years ago. The most amazing information about prehistoric reptiles, their character, features and eggs has found a place in this article.

Earth of the Dinosaur Times

The epoch, when giant lizards lived on our planet, began 160 million years and lasted about 56 million years.

At the moment it is common to divide the entire time span of the existence of our planet into 2 stages: Phanerozoic and Precambrian. They are called eons, or eonotemoy. And they are divided into periods.

Dinosaurs appeared during the Jurassic periodMesozoic - the second era of the Phanerozoic eon, when the continents already looked almost the same as today. On the planet at that time reigned a warm climate, conducive to the rapid development of life. The land was covered with dense thickets of pines, ferns, palms and cypresses. The fauna of the planet was represented by dinosaurs. Near them lived mammals, which are much inferior to them in size and had thick wool.

How to determine the age of dinosaurs

The petrified remains of these creatures were discoveredon all continents of the planet. Since the finds at great depths are older than those located above, paleontologists necessarily fix the location of their occurrence. At the moment, scientists are almost exactly calculating the age of the fossil for the level of radioactivity of the rock in which it was. The isotopes contained in them change their radioactivity as a function of time. By measuring its amount, you can determine the age of the breed and the fossils that have survived in it.

The giant lizard

Many are interested in the question of what size dinosaurs were. But there is no unambiguous answer to it, as everything depends on the type of reptile.

The largest dinosaur is the plesiosaurus,prehistoric animal with a very long neck. Judging by his petrified remains, he was huge. In particular, the length of his body was 16 m. He lived in the sea, he ate fish and invertebrates.

The plesiosaurs were superbly adapted tolife in salt water bodies. However, they breathed lungs, so they had to surf on the surface to inhale air. These lizards had 4 limbs, which eventually transformed into fins, and a body resembling a barrel in shape. There were two types of plesiosaurs: with small heads and long necks and short necks and huge heads. It is interesting that the largest dinosaur lived on all continents, including modern Antarctica.

The largest terrestrial carnivorous inhabitant of the planet of all time

This title belongs to the tyrannosaurus, who inhabited Asia and North America. He had a body 14 meters long and was a lucky hunter.

Tyrannosaurus had a massive skull thatbalanced by a heavy, long and hard tail. The reptile had large and powerful hind legs, and the forelegs had small, but mighty paws-had two clawed fingers.

Tiranosaurus, according to scientists, had a body weight in6.8 tons. He was a super-predator, and his prey was usually gadrosaurs, ceratops and sauropods. At the same time, some scientists believe that he mostly ate carrion.

At the moment, there are only about 30 skeleton of Tyrannosaurus, so the appearance of the lizard, recreated by these fossil remains, quite accurately conveys the way it actually looked.

Intellect level

It is believed that the most primitive representative of dinosaurs is Eoraptor lunensis with a body length of about 1 m, related to the group of theropods. His skeleton was found in Argentina in 1993.

The most intelligent are dinosaurs from troodontid detachment. However, their intellect was still inferior to the mental abilities of modern birds.

An interesting fact: the smallest brain, the size of which was with a walnut, belonged to a stegosaurus - a lizard with a body length of 9 m and a weight of 3 tons.

Eggs

The first in 1859 found a clutch of gypselosaur. Eggs of dinosaurs in shape were rounded and elongated. Eggs of dinosaurs of different species were found in Spain, Chechnya, China and India.

The largest fossil masonry belonged to sauropods. It was found in the territory of north-eastern Spain. The age of several hundred eggs that were in it was approximately 65-70 million years.

The latest masonry was discovered in 2010 in the Volgograd region. A total of 14 eggs were cut from 1 m to 1 m 20 cm in size.

Armored Dinosaurs

Ankylosaurs are the most protected dinosaurs. They had a kind of armor. Their back and head were protected by bone horns, plates and thorns, and the body was 2.5 m wide. A distinctive feature of such animals was a large mace that was at the end of their tail. Her lizard used as a powerful weapon, crushing his enemies with it.

The best runners

Interesting facts about dinosaurs concern theirphysical abilities. In particular, it is known that representatives of at least one species of carnivorous dinosaurs could travel at a speed of 40 km / h. Even faster ran a 100-kilogram Dromiceiomimus, which lived in the province of Alberta in Canada. He developed a speed of more than 60 km / h.

Four-winged individuals

Listing interesting facts about dinosaurs, you can notnot to mention the lizards, which are the direct ancestors of birds. Among them, the most surprising was the four-winged micro-torch Gui. He was only able to perform short planning flights from one tree to another. The length of this lizard was 77 cm. It is believed that this very creature, whose petrified remains were found in China in 2010, is the last link in the evolutionary chain of transformation of reptiles into birds.

The longest claws

The record holder for this parameter was terizinosaurus,found in the basin of the Nemigt River, on the territory of Mongolia. The length of his nails according to the outer curvature was 91 cm. Terizinosaur had no teeth, and the skull was frail. The lizard used to eat, most likely, termites. Huge nails were also found in the spinoza, whose body was 9 m long. They reached 30 cm.

And did you know that ...

Interesting facts about dinosaurs are quite numerous. In particular, few know that:

• Northern dinosaurs patrolled areas to detect prey and traveled a long distance from the nest;
• the dinosaurs had five fingers;
• apatosaurs could move their tails at a speed greater than the speed of sound;
• The largest skull was in the herbivorous lizard - the torosaur, which bore a giant bone shield around the neck;
• no dinosaur weighed as much as a modern blue whale;
• In the era of ancient reptiles, our planet did not have ice "hats";
• in the Chinese folk medicine used drugs, which include powder from the bones of dinosaurs;
• the ancient reptile Suuwassea emilieae had a hole in the head, the purpose of which still remains unknown to science;
• Adult tyrannosaurs, because of their large size, could not move quickly, so they hunted worse, produced little food and died early;
• nigzaurians had 500 teeth;
• Dinosaurs will never be cloned, since such a procedure is possible only if there is genetic material no more than 2,000,000 years old.

Now you know a lot of interesting facts aboutancient lizards and reptiles. At the same time, the amazing world of dinosaurs, extinct many millions of years ago, still harbors many mysteries that still await their researchers.