There are some interesting dinosaur facts that you may have never known about or heard about!
Dino Fact 1: What is actually a dinosaur? Scientists, when speaking of dinosaurs, actually refer to creatures living in one of 3 eras. Those would be the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous. Yet, a lot of people use the world dinosaur to talk about any prehistoric creature, examples include sea creatures and pterodactyls.
Dino Fact 2: What are the ages of dinosaurs called? Those ages would be the Jurassic, Cretaceous, and the Triassic. You can check out more information on those in the dinosaur history page.
Dino Fact 3: There were actually really smart dinosaurs that roamed the earth (not as smart as humans of course)! The smartest was the Troodon.
Dino Fact 4: The dumbest dinosaur around was the Stegosaurus. Even though it had a body weighing 2 tons, its brain was the size of a nut!
Dino Fact 5: Coelophysis were the fastest dinosaurs around. Short distance sprints of those dinosaurs reached up to 30 miles per hour!
Dino Fact 6: Sauropods were the largest dinosaurs around. One was the Seismosaurus, which around 165 feet long. Arentinosauruses were the heaviest at 100 tons in size. Then there was the Brachiosaurus, which reached around 39 feet in height. This allowed it to reach tree branches with ease. Of all the hunting dinosaurs, Giganotosaurus were the largest hunters, reaching 8 tons in weight, and 46 feet in length.
Dino Fact 7: The smallest dinosaurs in size were the Saltopuses. They were only 3 feet in size, with a weight of 5 pounds.
Dino Fact 8: There are several theories about how dinosaurs went to extinction. Not many scientists actually know how this came along. The following theories are presented for that though!
- Meteor strikes planet earth.
- Many volcanic eruptions occur as a result.
- A long period of climate change wipes out all dinosaurs.
Dino Fact 9: Were dinosaurs birds or reptiles? There are now circulating beliefs among scientists that dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded, similar to birds, instead of being like a cold-blooded reptile. There are also beliefs that birds of today were actual dinosaurs, and that birds were reptiles! Confusing, isn’t it? We’ll need more information on that!
Dino Fact 10: Only dinosaurs live on land! This is actually not true, since many non-dinosaurs were available at the time too! An example of those would be the Kronosaurus, which was the longest, growing to a height of 42 feet in length.
Dino Fact 11: Dinosaurs were first to appear almost 200 million years ago, in an era called the Triassic period. This when a group of reptiles, called the archosaurs, excelled at land hunting. This allowed them to develop amazing features in their skulls and legs for that purpose, eventually leading to their evolution into dinosaurs!
Dino Fact 12: Dinosaur eggs actually came in many shapes and sizes! Some eggs had a height of up to 16 inches, while others were smaller. The first dinosaur egg to be discovered was actually found in France, during the year 1869. Many eggs after that were discovered with their original intact shells.
Dino Fact 13: Why were dinosaurs so odd looking? Well, the reason was because they were alive for millions of years. Their forms constantly evolved to suit their environments and the conditions they were in. Development of parts like horns, spines, and claws all had purposes for each dinosaur.
When you think about it, you’ll find that dinosaurs were alive for almost 200 million years. Humans on the other hand had barely lived for 120,000! What would happen if we were to live for another 1 million years in the future?!