Contents page 1 — dinosaurs weren’t all green-page 2 — Were the dominant predator bloodthirsty beasts? On a page
again and again we read of the new bone discoveries: the Fossil Remains evidence of the giant lizards that once lived on earth. From all of these puzzle parts of the individual finds an image is slow, how the dinosaurs lived, what they looked like and how the giants among them have died out. Reason for us, once the most important Dinowissen. These ten things you can remember.
1. Relatives of the dinosaurs still live on earth
That they were long extinct – but this assumption is probably the myths, the mother of all Dinosaurs. Clearly, a living Tyrannosaurus rex or a 60-tonne Argentino saurus to present to the world in vain. On the basis of a relatively small two-legged predatory dinosaur (theropod) did it but a group until today, and is unfolding even unprecedented kinds of wealth: the birds with their 10,000 species. For comparison: Even to their weddings have probably never lived more than about 250 of the classic dinosaur species at the same time on the earth.
Bernhard’s cone is a biologist and science writer. Recently his book “Extinct appeared, dinosaurs and their descendants” (2018). © private
The great anatomical Similarity of two-legged predatory dinosaurs and birds was noticed contemporaries of Charles Darwin, is by no means a new discovery. Really been able to enforce this view, but it was only in the late 20th century. Century by the American John Ostrom and his student Robert Bakker. Ostrom discovered the Deinonychus, the model for the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, a new agile type of dinosaurs, whose Similarity to modern birds fascinated him. It also turned out that more and more exclusive characteristics of the birds have developed from dinosaurs. The hollow, air bags-riddled bones, the two leg as well as nest building and brood care. The prominent New York paleontologist Mark Norell brought it to the point: “Because birds are descended from dinosaurs, they are dinosaurs, just like we are mammals, humans.”
Correctly, it should say so: Only the non-avian dinosaurs died out at the end of the Mesozoic era. In the shape of birds, some dinosaurs have survived.
2. They had feathers, but not to fly
For us, we can only experience the present animal world, birds are the only feathered creatures. To fly birds, feathers and the ability to come together for us, inseparable. Thanks to recent fossil finds, especially from China we know, however, that the spring was created in a time when to think of birds as yet. Springs there were, how many other supposed characteristics of Birds, already at the time of the dinosaurs. They are, however, not been invented, to swing with their help, in the air. They probably originally served as a heat protection, but was used also to come up with an eye-catching spring to indicate the costume, to rivals, to impress and especially to potential partners, as the birds do today. Sexual selection, the adaptation pressure created by animals, usually females, choose Partner based on certain characteristics, and behavior, is a powerful driving force of Evolution. About how the animals use the newly acquired spring the ability to fly costume finally obtained, there are various competing theories.
3. A meteorite impact left her extinction
dinosaurs rule the continents on more than 150 million years, 1,000 Times longer than Homo sapiens. The largest of the sauropods, or long-neck dinosaurs are measured to have been at the time they existed, the most successful herbivores that have ever lived on our planet. So you were anything other than discontinued models or faulty designs.
debt to the extinction of an unforeseeable stroke of fate: the impact of a ten-kilometre-wide asteroid, is an event with such catastrophic global consequences that no larger species were able to survive. A drop in temperature to around 26 degrees Celsius, mega tsunamis, giant forest fires, was wasting oceans – only smaller animal species with hidden life, and a very wide food spectrum had a Chance under these circumstances. The early mammals that lived enjoyed as of the time of the dinosaurs, and a group of relatively small feathered dinosaurs, the birds. An impact crater that fits in time exactly was found on the Mexican Peninsula of Yucatán. Part of it lies in the sea, is hidden under several Hundred-Meter-high layers of sediment. May be severe volcanic eruptions in India followed the impact.
4. Also dinosaur only had a brain
The paths in a huge Dinokörper, also for nerve impulses. And, given the small brains of these giants, one naturally wonders: How is this possible? Or So must be thought to have been constructed from a thickening in the spinal canal of a Stegosaurus equal to a second brain. Today, researchers assume that at this point, in addition to an accumulation of nerve cells, a so-called Plexus, as in the case of birds, a large glycogen depot was located. It probably served as a storage of energy for the nervous system and the strong tail muscles.
5. They lived not only in America
Actually one could get the impression that Dinos lived only there, where today the United States. Because almost all of the fossils of dinosaurs that are known to a larger Public, come from North America. Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Hadrosaurus, Deinonychus, all of them were first or exclusively in the United States.
The first dinosaurs emerged, but already about 250 million years ago in the middle Triassic and at the time, Pangaea, all of the land masses comprehensive super continent that broke subsequent to the age of the Jura existed. Therefore, dinosaurs lived on all continents, even in Antarctica, their fossil bones have been found. Outside of professional circles, the name of a European, Asian or African species, however, are hardly bekof Association, which should only be due to the fact that American dinosaurs have been mainly through her appearances in films such as King Kong (1933) early on, in part, in all of the world’s export culture exported popular.
came To be that Andrew Carnegie, a wealthy entrepreneur and philanthropist, at the beginning of the 20th century. Century plaster copies of a near-complete Diplodocus-skeleton made of the then largest known dinosaur, and museums all over the world gave away. So don’t consolidated only in Europe, the impression that dinosaurs have been mainly an American phenomenon.
