Incredible Photo Of Dinosaur Skeleton Extraction

It is amazing when you think about it, our planet used to be populated by giants. Oh I am not talking about humans here, but I am talking about animals. Humans have this strange fascination with dinosaurs that seems to stay with them their entire lives. It starts out at childhood when we are first told about the creatures and given dinosaur toys to play with and continues throughout our lives. No one can say exactly why we feel this way, but it might be because the time of the dinosaurs is the closest thing to an alien planet. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth, the earth was full of animals that are all just about gone today. Since many of them were so huge, it gives us a whole new scale of size to think about. When we think of dinosaurs and when they lived, it is almost like a tale from the Arabian Nights.

So far, the oldest dinosaurs that we have found are about 230 million years old and come from South America, more specifically Argentina and Brazil. The most primitive one was named Eoraptor, but scientists think that it may not be the oldest dinosaur since its structure shows some advanced traits, so there may be more discoveries of even older dinosaurs in the future. Eoraptor was not very big, but it was a meat eater. When children are young they usually ask the question "were people alive when dinosaurs roamed the Earth?" According to science, the last dinosaurs died at least 65 million years before man made his appearance. There have been certain indications that this may not be true, but scientists do not recognize these indications as factual. What I am talking about are ancient stones that have paintings on them of man and dinosaur together from ancient peoples in South America that had no way of knowing that dinosaurs even existed.

Dinosaurs lived in many different areas and were separated by different time periods. The periods in which they lived are called the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. This is where many movies get it wrong. They show different types of dinosaurs living together that were actually separated by millions and millions of years. An example of this is the Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. This two dinosaurs lived in time periods so far apart that we are living closer to the time of Tyrannosaurus than they did to each other. That is quite an astonishing thought. I can't take credit for thinking that up, but it is a great analogy. Even the continents were different when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It is thought that a super continent existed that broke apart. It is known as Pangea. As the land broke up, it scattered the dinosaurs everywhere. Well that is the theory anyway.

Some people wonder what the biggest dinosaur was. So far it seems to be the Brachisasaurus, this creature could reach almost 76 feet long and 39 feet high. It is important to note that this is the biggest complete skeleton found of a dinosaur, but a couple of incomplete skeletons seem to indicated that dinosaurs that were up to 2 times larger might have lived. The dinosaurs that I am talking about are Argentinasaurus and Amphicoelias. There are new super dinosaurs being discovered every once in a while so this record may not stand. As for the smallest dinosaur, picture something that is slightly bigger than a chicken. The Compsognathus was pretty long, about three feet, but only weighed about 6.5 pounds. Mussaurus was said to be the smallest dinosaur ever found, but science has determined that it was only a hatchling of the Compsognathus, a much larger dinosaur.

Another question that is often asked is "how many different types of dinosaurs existed?" This is a tough question. The reason it is so tough is that there are so many incomplete sets of bones. Only about 300 types can be absolutely verified, although more have been named. It is suspected that over 900 types of dinosaurs lived and maybe the number is higher.

Some scientists say that dinosaurs were cold blooded while others disagree. This is another question that is extremely hard to answer, because we have no evidence either way. It might turn out that both sides are right. Maybe some dinosaurs were warm blooded and others not. Another question that we still can't answer is how long these creatures lived. Modern reptiles usually have a life span of no more than 66 years, but we all know there are exceptions to this rule such as giant sea tortoise that lives for almost 200 years. It is hard to tell how long dinosaurs lived and we may never know.

You have to wonder why dinosaurs became so large. Science really doesn't know the reason for this, but there are speculations that it protected them from predators or it was necessary to regulate their body temperature or even that it enabled some of them to reach the tops of trees where they could eat the leaves. I personally find these explanations weak. If predators didn't grow so big than dinosaurs wouldn't have had to, this seems to answer the question with another question. Why did predators grow so big? As far as regulating body temperature, the lizards around today don't seem to have a problem with this or they would be huge. The third argument doesn't seem to hold water either since not all dinosaurs ate tree leaves. I think that a better explanation is needed. This is a great question and I would like to know why other animals are not huge today?

Dinosaurs will always have a fascination for us even though we may never have all the answers to their existence. Here is a little food for thought, will they ever make a reappearance? No one ever seems to discuss that do they?