What a dinosaur looks like. Types, description and photos of dinosaurs

Millions of years ago these giants of the ancient world - dinosaurs reigned on the planet. Only in the XIX century, scientists began to study their remains. There were many questions related to the ancient lizards. One of them: "What does a dinosaur look like?" - has not yet been fully clarified. Too great a chasm separates the modern man and these amazing animals in order to speak with confidence about their appearance.

Ancient giants of the planet

There were dinosaurs (photo and description of some of them you can see in our article) about 230 million years ago. The time of the origin of these creatures belongs to the late Triassic period, the flowering of which fell on the Jurassic, and the disappearance occurred at the end of the Cretaceous. For millions of years of existence, dinosaurs have spread throughout the earth. Their remains were found even in Antarctica.

Types of dinosaurs

To date, scientists know more than a thousand species of ancient reptiles. They are divided into predators, herbivorous, aquatic and flying dinosaurs. Such diversity generates great difficulties, since usually in the hands of scientists to determine the species of an ancient animal are at best a few bones.

How do researchers recreate the appearance of ancient lizards?

Types of dinosaurs with a description can be found everywhere - in encyclopedias on the ancient world of our planet, scientific works, books for children. A large number of films, documentaries and children's cartoons devoted to the giants of the past. If you ask any person, he will describe the appearance of the ancient lizards quite accurately. How do we know what dinosaurs look like? Photos and videos with them, of course, can not be obtained, because they existed millions of years ago. The answer lies in the remains of these reptiles. To date, they found more than one hundred thousand. These include not only bones, but also dinosaur eggs, their excrement, petrified fingerprints of the paws and bodies.

According to fragments of the skeleton, scientists restore the appearance of the lizards. How do dinosaur bones look? Outwardly they differ from the remains of modern animals in size and degree of preservation. Unfortunately, the find of the whole skeleton is an incredible rarity. Most often, scientists have to determine what a dinosaur looks like, on the basis of disparate remains.

Where are the dinosaur bones found?

On Earth, there are many places where you can find the remains of ancient giants. In the Canadian province of Alberta found more than a thousand such valuable finds. These were the remains of the lizard-centrosaurs. In Argentina, in the province of Chubut, the bones of seven titanosaurs were found. In Mexico in 2014, in the territory of one of the deserts, bones of 14 lizards were found. A large number of remains of dinosaurs continue to be found in the Chinese province of Shandong. Here were found the bones of large theropods - predatory ancient lizards of tyrannosaurus and ankylosaurus.

How is the process of restoring the appearance of the ancient lizards?

Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. Soft tissues during this time have turned to dust, and bones have petrified. Since the XIX century, how much the dinosaur looks like, we have learned much more, but now there is no certainty whether scientists are correcting their appearance.

This work is laborious and time-consuming. First you need to collect from the fragments found the skeleton. If there are not enough parts, they have to be restored. Next to work artists begin. On the skull and skeleton they recreate the body and skin of the lizard. For this, a technique is used that is used in forensic science. As the skin of a dinosaur looks, it was possible to find out thanks to fossils, on which its texture and pattern are clearly visible. It was waterproof, dry and consisted of scales. On the found prints clearly visible hard areas and elastic folds of the skin. Some species of ancient reptiles were protected by shell. These include ankylosaurs.

One of the problems determining how a dinosaur looks is to find out the color of the skin. While paleontologists can not reliably answer this question. Therefore, as a basis for reconstruction of the shape of the lizard, modern animals and birds are taken. So, the artist Tyler Killor, who ordered the scientists to restore the appearance of the dinosaur ruogsa, took the color of the plumage of the bird of the whale as a sample.

But even the most carefully reconstructed image of a dinosaur can undergo changes. Modern technologies and recent discoveries in paleontology give new data on ancient giants.

How the dinosaur looks: a general description

The ancient lizards were divided into two large orders: the sparrows and the bird-saver. The latter were sauropods (herbivores). Lizard dinosaurs were divided into two groups: theropods (predators) and sauropods. These are representatives of large pangolinas with massive bodies and long necks: apatosaurus, diplodocus, brachiosaurus). Each of the detachments of dinosaurs is represented both by bipedal pangolins and by those who moved on four limbs.

Predatory dinosaurs in most cases moved on two legs.

There is an opinion that all dinosaurs were of huge growth. This is not true. Among them were like real giants (seismosaurus, spinoza), and small-sized lizards (komsognat, heterodontosaurus).

Dinosaurs - one of the most amazing representatives of the animal world of our planet in the past. They combined the signs of several groups of modern animals that were now isolated: crocodiles, lizards, birds and mammals.

With crocodiles, their skin and the location of teeth brings them closer together. The skull is the same as that of the lizards, and the structure of the tubular bones is related to dinosaurs with mammals. The structure of the pelvis and hind limbs brings the ancient reptiles closer to the birds.

Most of the dinosaurs moved on the hind limbs, located vertically, leaning while walking on the fingers. This way of movement made them more active.

Disputes about the structure of internal organs in the environment of scientists to this day. What they were, now can not be determined, so the basis is taken by the anatomy of birds and lizards. A little more is known about the brains of ancient reptiles. The whole skulls found allow us to assume with a high degree of probability that in structure it resembled the brain of modern lizards.

Difficulties exist with the clarification of the coloration of the skin. Perhaps some of the dinosaurs had a skin of protective color. Some could have a bright color following the example of modern lizards.

According to recent studies, a number of ancient lizards had feathers.

It is not only the widely known archeopteryx, but also a micro-torptor, caudipteryx and others.

Amazing appearance: the most famous and unusual dinosaurs

Among the ancient lizards there are very interesting individuals, the appearance of which is unusual. Zuhomim - a huge predator - with a narrow mouth resembled a crocodile, and the claw of the first finger on its forelimbs reached a length of more than 30 centimeters.

Carnotaur had horns. They have this predator, most likely played the role of identification marks.

Griposaurus had a beak and approximately 800 teeth. He was herbivorous or a predator, yet unknown.

Tyrannosaurus Rex is a dinosaur, the description of which is always of great interest. This is one of the largest predators of the past, whose appearance and size look awesome.

He was two-legged, had a massive head, which was balanced by a large tail. The peculiarity of the tyrannosaurus is that, with powerful hind limbs, it had very small forepaws with two fingers. Due to the fact that among 30 found skeletons of this predator several preserved completely, the scientists managed to thoroughly study its structure, biology and biomechanics.

Conclusion

The history of amazing giants, millions of years ago, inhabiting the Earth, has not been fully studied to the end. New findings and more accurate methods of research can reveal many secrets of the way of life, appearance and physiology of dinosaurs.