Fossil fanatic

Founding fther of paleontology

40-foot sea monster

not a dinosaur, but a seaa going relative of todays monitor lizard (e.g. komodo dragon)

• studied giant sloth fossils from South America
• theorized that dinosaurs died long ago
• considered a genius, peple for the first time gave serious consideration that animals can and have gone extinct

• "big reptile"
• Buckland's dinosaur

• named by Mantell
• first described herbivorous dinosaur

• named by Sir Richard Owen
• "fearfully great reptiles"

Characterized as

• giant
• possessing upright stances
• non-aquatic
• having more than two sacral vertebrae(backbones fused in the hip region)

• (crocodiles, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and other archosaurians such as "dinosauromorphs")
• teeth in socket: replaced throughout life
• hingelike ankles
• erect posture

• three or more sacral vertebrae: fused backbones
• hands with three main fingers
• perforate acetabulae: the hole where the thighbone attached goes all the way through the hip

• "bird hips"
• pelvic bones shaped like those of birds
• (e.g. Iguanadon)

pelves like lizards

(e.g. Megalosaurus)

• Triassic Period
• Jurassic Period
• Cretaceous Period

• occurred 251-200 million years ago
• the oldest dinosaurs show up midway through this period

arid in equatorial regions (e.g. like florida)

Closer to the poles it was cool, wet and rainy (e.g. like Seattle)

32 foot long

"terror crocodiles"

• the supposed Loch Ness Monster
• bodies like sea turtles but necks long and snake-like

• the animal Cuvier used in support of his extinction theory
• sea-going relatives of the living monitor lizard like the Komodo Dragon

largest known pterosaurs

had a 36-wing wingspan

• appeared in the late triassic period
• initially rat or weasl like and mouse to opossum sized
• remained so throughout the entire 173 million year tenure of the dinosaurs

• "traces of ancient life"
• tracks, eggs, skin impressions
• gastroliths: stomach stones
• bite marks
• coprolites: fossilized feces
• the primary means by which paleontologists learn about dinosaur biology

characterized by lizard-like hip bones

• includes meat-eaters like T-Rex and herbivorous long neck sauropod giants

hips shaped like those of living birds

includes the herbivorous armored dinosaurs, the horned dinosaurs, the duck-bills, the bizarre head ramming pachycephalosaurus

• Bird-shaped hips
• a beak to crop plants
• a nutcracker jaw joint that allowed all teeth to come together at once and aided the processing of plants

Sheild Bearers

Distiguishing features

• armor in their skins referred to as osteoderms

Ankylosaurs: the dinosaur "tanks"

Stegosaurs: the "plated lizards"

"fused lizards"

quadrapedal, herbivorous

• gregarious: herding animals
• herbivorous
• bipedal or facultatively quadrapedal

• early ornithopod group
• "different sized-teeth lizards"

• criss crossed back and tail tendons
• forward forward prong on the pubis

• replaced the iguanodonts
• grinding dentitions

• very broad, duck-like bills
• dental batteries composed of hundreds of tightly adjoining teeth