The Evolution of Reptiles

The Evolution of Reptiles — page 1

The Evolution of Reptiles — page 2 — CHAPTER ONE The End of the Age of the Dinosaurs Mansourasaurus shahinae walked slowly down the beach On one side of the dinosaur waves lapped the sand On the other side the coastal jungle stretched into the distance The dinosaur pulled a mouthful of leaves from the trees chewed and swallowed Paleontologist Sanaa Al Sayed works to preserve a fossil of Mansourasaurus shahinae The jungle provided the food M. shahinae needed to survive The dinosaur moved among the trees and other plants eating its fill From time to time it scanned the area The jungle that provided food

The Evolution of Reptiles — page 3 — also hid possible predators The bony plates along M. shahinae's back offered some protection but the massive animal was not invulnerable It wasn't fully grown yet but it already weighed as much as a modern male African elephant It was between 26 and 33 feet 8 and 10 m long In the distance it could hear the heavy footsteps of other M. shahinae as the dinosaurs foraged for food SIGNIFICANT FIND In 2013 Dr.Hesham Sallam head of the Department of Geology at Mansoura University in Mansoura Egypt took his crew into the desert 470 miles 750 km southwest of Cairo For five years they had been searching for fossils He told his team to spread out to cover as much ground as possible As they walked his cell phone rang He was one mile 2 km from the searcher who was calling Doctor there are a lot of bones Come and see them she said As soon as he spotted the first bone he suspected they had made a historic discovery His team had found a partial dinosaur skeleton By the time they were done excavating they had located part of the skull the lower jaw vertebrae from the neck and back ribs

The Evolution of Reptiles — page 4 — Sauropods long necks helped them reach food most of the shoulder and upper front leg part of a hind foot and pieces of armor plating The skeleton more complete than many fossils was a sauropod a long necked herbivorous or plant eating dinosaur They eventually named this new reptile Mansourasaurus shahinae It lived approximately 80 million years ago MYA during the end of the Cretaceous

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