Discovering Dinosaurs

Discovering Dinosaurs — page 3 — Introduction We are paleoartists that is artists who work with paleontologists to recreate the look of extinct animals by examining their fossils putting the bones together covering them with muscles and skin and adding exterior colors to show what they would have looked like in life We have been doing this for over sixty years combined We are fortunate to work with museums around the world including different from the animals who roamed the Earth before the Mesozoic the Smithsonian and Dinosaur National Monument and now we’d We also explore how different types of dinosaurs are related to each like to share some of that work with you in this book Here you will see other and how some of them survived the extinction event at the end your old favorites like T rex and Triceratops but you will also discover of the Cretaceous Period and evolved into the birds we see around strange and interesting new dinosaurs us today There have been more dinosaurs discovered in the past ten years Paleoartists have to know how to reconstruct prehistoric plant life than in all of the history of paleontology dating back to the 1850s too And the plants you see in the art inside were also rendered after Inside you will discover probably for the first time some of the most much discovery and study of plant fossils As such you will also get important new finds a chance to see dinosaurs in their environments at specific times and The nearly 150 dinosaurs featured here cover the three main places including two spectacular three long foot gatefold illustrations periods of the Mesozoic Era Triassic Jurassic and Cretaceous of our murals that reside in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s when dinosaurs dominated life on Earth and represent a diverse Dinosaurs In Their Time exhibit one of the largest and most to up range of types sizes and shapes Each dinosaur includes a color full date dinosaur displays in the world illustration an information key with name size location and more We hope you and your family will enjoy this book and that maybe and descriptive text with interesting facts about each animal In you too will discover a new dinosaur one day general dinosaurs are grouped as either hipped bird Ornithischia or hipped lizard Saurischia It is this hip structure that made them Bob Walters and Tess Kissinger 8

Discovering Dinosaurs — page 4 — What Is a Dinosaur Dinosaurs were among the most successful animals to inhabit the extinction event that occurred at the end of the Mesozoic Era planet Earth They dominated terrestrial life for nearly 160 million years in what has been called The Age of Dinosaurs However not all dinosaurs died out in 65 million years ago In fact they are still here among us and have been all this time they surround us in their billions and we call them birds In 1842 British naturalist and anatomist Sir Richard Owen first gave the official name Dinosauria to a group of three extinct reptiles discovered in England Iguanodon Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus Though the name in Greek means Terrible Lizards dinosaurs are not lizards Also there were many other kinds of reptiles living at the same time but these were not dinosaurs Pterosaurs flying reptiles and dwelling sea reptiles that lived during the Mesozoic Era are not classified as dinosaurs The dinosaurs are different from other reptilian groups in the structure of their limbs looked like may be quite different from one species to the next Mammals in contrast have different kinds of teeth for different uses such as tearing cutting grinding etc There were a lot more dinosaurs that ate plants than ate meat Some dinosaurs walked on two legs and some larger ones walked on four legs and some of the biggest may have reared up on hind legs to reach treetops They laid hard shelled eggs sometimes in communal nesting grounds caring for their young The earliest dinosaurs were small three to five feet long bipedal two legged hunters speedy and agile It seems amazing and ironic that some of these diminutive creatures evolved into the enormous behemoths of the Jurassic Period and then still later into modern birds Dinosaur eggs Sir Richard Owen particularly the pelvis the hip and hind legs which allowed them to walk in an upright manner just as mammals do Another distinctive feature is that each species of dinosaur had only one kind of tooth although what that tooth Hadrosaurus skeleton 9

Discovering Dinosaurs — page 5 — Museums are good places to learn about dinosaurs 10

Discovering Dinosaurs — page 6 — How Do We Know about Dinosaurs Our knowledge of dinosaurs and their world is based on stone with the minerals in the stone replacing the original biological material the fossil record The word fossil comes from the Latin language and means from the ground Fossils occur when If the find is considered a new kind of dinosaur the scientist gets to name it remains of animals and plants are preserved in layers of Even without formal training you can still look for fossils check out one removed from the surrounding rock back at the museum or university the lead scientist will write a description of the find in an article for publication of the young paleontologists clubs across the country In fact many important almost completely Dinosaur bones are the most commonly found fossils but discoveries have been made by amateur fossil hunters skin and feather impressions footprints eggs some with fossilized embryos inside and even dinosaur dung are also found Paleontology is the study of the fossil remains of ancient life and the interpretation of what they mean Paleontologists also known as paleobiologists must study geology biology anatomy and other disciplines to gain the expertise needed to accurately describe the fossils they find Dinosaur fossils are generally found in remote locations around the world referred to as the field and scientists delve into the earth to find them Our Earth is made up of layers called strata They are like the pages in a book each atop the earlier one The places where paleontologists probe for fossils are called dig sites Once the dinosaur fossils have been collected and carefully prepared 11 Theropod footprint Fossils must be carefully removed from the rock surrounding them

5

PAGE 5 OF 140

The only kids' eBook subscription service that offers thousands of high-quality books from well known publishers like HarperCollins, National Geographic and others.

JavaScript Required

Whoops! We're sorry but Epic doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Check your web browser's settings to make sure it's enabled.