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DINOSAURS

DINOSAUR FOSSILS

Long before the time of humans, dinosaurs ruled the world.

Some of these amazing animals were huge!

People have known about dinosaurs since the 1800s.

Ever since then, people have wanted to learn more.

We know about dinosaurs because we have found fossils.

Some fossils are bones, teeth, and other body parts that turned to stone.

Other fossils are things like footprints, nests, and eggs.

Fossils help us learn about the bodies and lives of dinosaurs.

WHAT KIND OF ANIMAL?

Dinosaurs are members of a large animal group known as reptiles.

Most reptiles today have dry, scaly skin.

During the time of dinosaurs, not all reptiles had scales. Some had feathers!

Dinosaurs walked in a different way from today’s reptiles.

Let’s compare a lizard and a dinosaur.

The lizard’s legs stick out on the sides.

The dinosaur’s legs are under its body.

WHERE DINOSAURS LIVED

Dinosaurs lived on every continent.

Some kinds of dinosaurs lived in many different places.

Other kinds lived in only a few places.

When dinosaurs were alive, all the continents were closer together.

It was easier to get from one continent to another.

Scientists who study dinosaurs are called paleontologists.

They have found hundreds of kinds of dinosaurs.

Some dinosaurs are known from just a few bones.

For others, most of their bones have been found.

Paleontologists place dinosaurs in one of two groups, based on their hips.

Lizard-hipped dinosaurs have hip bones like modern lizards.

Bird-hipped dinosaurs have hip bones like birds

Let’s learn about some dinosaurs in each group.

LIZARD-HIPPED DINOSAURS

The best-known dinosaur is Tyrannosaurus rex, or T. rex.

This huge meat eater had strong back legs and a long, powerful tail. Its front legs were tiny.

No one knows what T. rex used them for.

T. rex had a thick, heavy skull. Its bite was the strongest of any land animal ever.

Its mouth was filled with large teeth.

The front teeth were for grabbing and pulling.

The side teeth tore meat, and the back teeth cut up the meat.

T. rex mainly ate large plant-eating dinosaurs.

It hunted some of its food. It also ate animals that were already dead.

More than fifty T. rex skeletons have been found.

The largest one is on display in Chicago.

Velociraptor was another meat eater.

This dinosaur was much smaller than T. rex.

It was different in another way, too.

It had feathers!

However, its arms were too short for flying.

It had a long tail and a large claw on each back foot.

Brachiosaurus had a very long neck. Its front legs were longer than its back legs.

(Brachiosaurus means “arm lizard.”)

This dinosaur was a leaf eater.

An adult Brachiosaurus ate more than eight hundred pounds of leaves every day.

BIRD-HIPPED DINOSAURS

Triceratops was a plant eater with a huge head.

It had three horns and a bony “collar,” or frill.

The horns grew longer as the dinosaur got older.

Triceratops used its horns to fight other dinosaurs, including T. rex.

Ankylosaurus had armor on the top of its body.

The armor was made of bony plates and knobs growing in its skin.

Ankylosaurus also had horns on its head and a tail like a club.

This plant eater was about half as long as a school bus.

Stegosaurus was another armored plant eater.

It had a small head and wide plates that stood up on its back.

The tip of its tail had spikes.

Paleontologists think that Stegosaurus used its spiked tail to keep enemies away.

Shantungosaurus was a kind of hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur.

Hadrosaurs were the largest bird-hipped dinosaurs, and Shantungosaurus was the larg [...]