staff room library dinosaurs I’m Eric eagle senior librarian of the eagle eyed Explorer Club years ago the club recruited me as one of its special agents codename Agent Eagle Most days you’ll find me in the basement of the library organizing the atlases But I always keep my rucksack at the ready in case the club needs me for one of its urgent missions I never know when to expect a call My latest mission is not only top secret but very dangerous so keep it hush-hush The club has ordered me to file a report on the entire history of the dinosaurs as soon as possible It looks like I’ll need to go back millions of years in time
explorations earth happened explore dinosaurs I’ll need to fill out a Journal to keep track of my discoveries I’m a lso drawing up a Timeline to show the life story of dinosaurs from their ancient origins to their grisly end No time to waste Are you feeling brave let's go
dinosaurs were ancient types of reptile distant cousins to modern reptiles such as lizards they lived on the earth for 176 million years that's hard to comprehend for humans like us who have only been around for less than 200,000 years what clues have been found about the oldest known dinosaur who first discovered the dinosaurs where does the name dinosaur come from and how do you identify a dinosaur fossil the unidentified reptilian bones 1 WHAT ARE DINOSAURS Mysterious clues in ancient bones Our expedition into the history of the dinosaurs starts on the sandy shores of Lake Malawi in southern Tanzania Africa Here in the 1930s paleontologists scientists who study ancient living things found a curious cluster of bones that was not so easy to identify one single arm bone and several pieces of vertebrae backbone A ridge along the arm indicated that whatever the creature was it was strong with powerful muscles And although the bones looked like those of a reptile their structure was more like a bird or mammal skeleton Above its hips 6 three vertebrae were fused together unlike modern reptiles which just have two What sort of creature did the bones belong to Different scientists much later on in 2012 came to an exciting conclusion They had seen these types of clues before and knew what they were looking at What had been found was ancient what had been found was unique it was a dinosaur Nyasasaurus as the mysterious creature was named is now thought to be the oldest dinosaur ever discovered living about 240 million years ago in the Triassic period NYASASAURUS No 03
A history of discovery Nyasasaurus may be the oldest dinosaur ever found but people have been unearthing fossil evidence of dinosaurs for a long time In 1676 in Oxfordshire England people dug up the bones of an animal far larger than any creature then alive No one knew what the bones belonged to Some said they were elephant bones left behind by the Romans Others said they came from a giant human from biblical times It was not until 1822 that the British paleontologist William Buckland suggested that the bones which included a giant tooth may have belonged to a creature he called Megalosaurus a huge but extinct reptile William Buckland dinosaur hunter EXPLORER NOTES species from the ignuanodon genus iguanodon SPECIES Iguanodon bernissartensis SPECIES Iguanodon dawsoni SPECIES Iguanodon anglicus New names for preh istoric foss ils Twenty years later British biologist Richard Owen identified similarities between Megalosaurus and fossils of Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus It was his idea that they all belonged to a group of extinct reptiles he called Dinosauria meaning terrible lizard But the dinosaurs were not lizards and they were not all terrible either Biologists give scientific names to different animals or plants to show how they are connected A group of living things that share certain characteristics is called a genus But different individuals within the group may have further differences of their own This is where the word species comes in Dinosaurs in the genus Iguanodon share certain traits but Iguanodon dawsoni is its own species a specific type of Iguanodon with its own specific characteristics turn the page to discover how dinosaur fossils are identified 7
