Sixty-six Million Years Ago
An Intro to Dinosaurs
What is a Dinosaur?
An Intro to Dinosaurs
What is a Dinosaur?
Dinosaurs are creatures that roamed the Earth from 245-66 million years ago. This timeframe is known as the Mesozoic era. Along with dinosaurs, there was reptiles, both in water, on land and in the sky. There was also fish. You may have heard of dinosaurs being reptiles and crocodiles being dinosaurs. Both of these statements are false. Dinosaurs were more bird like than they were reptilian. It is more likely that dinosaurs should are their own classification and neither the title 'reptile' nor 'bird' should be attached. This also shows how crocodiles are not actually crocodiles. Crocodiles are reptiles and dinosaurs are not.
What makes up a dinosaur?
All dinosaurs have three things in common.
- They all have scales somewhere on their body.
- They all have legs aligned directly below the hips.
- They all lay eggs.
All birds have these traits. Birds have scales on their feet and under their feathers. Birds lay eggs and birds all have legs directly below the hips.
What Happened to Dinosaurs?
Dinosaurs all went extinct some sixty-six million years ago. Why they went extinct, nobody really knows for sure but the most common theory is that they went extinct from a meteor that hit Earth and caused smoke to black out the world. Without any light, plants could not live and without plants, herbivores could not live and then without the primary food source, the carnivores would eat each other and all of the herbivores, having no more food left to live. Other possibilities may have involved disease, the coming of the ice age or a volcano.