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Types of Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs can be categorized in different ways, such as their size or their eating habits. In terms of eating habits, dinosaurs can be divided into carnivores (meat eaters), herbivores (plant eaters) and omnivores (the ones that ate both plants and meat). Perhaps the most commonly known of all meat-eating dinosaurs is the tyrannosaurus-rex or T-Rex, as it is more often called. There were other carnivores as well and the list can be found in the references. Alamosaurus is one of the most widely known plant-eating dinosaurs, famous for its very long neck and tail. The list of herbivore dinosaurs is much longer than that of carnivores. Only few dinosaurs have been found that ate both plants and meat. Oviraptor was one of them. With a length of about 2 meters, this dinosaur preyed on small animals and ate plants too.
When Did Dinosaurs Live?
Dinosaurs roamed the earth for about 165 million years. Nobody knows for sure how they died over 65 million years ago, but most scientists believe that a large asteroid hit the earth causing catastrophic changes in the environment. For example, the sun was not visible because of clouds of smoke and dust for a long time. As a result, the temperature of the earth's surface decreased considerably. The dinosaurs could not survive in those inhospitable conditions and eventually died.
How Do We Know that Dinosaurs Existed?
Scientists have unearthed a large number of fossilized remains of dinosaurs, some of which have been remarkably preserved. These fossilized body parts include bones, teeth, claws and even soft tissues. By putting these remains together scientists have been able to create computerized images of the dinosaurs. These images together with the actual fossils give clues about the behavior of the dinosaurs. For example, the structure of their jaws claws and teeth would determine whether the dinosaur was a carnivore, herbivore or omnivore.
Did Fossil Fuels Come from Dinosaurs?
The fossil fuels that we consume, such as oil, natural gas, and coal, were formed from vegetation and fossils of animals buried underneath the earth for millions of years. Dinosaurs were very big animals and when they died, their bodies were buried under the mud with time. Over millions of years, their remains were gradually squashed under layers of hard rocks underneath the earth's surface and turned into fossils. The intense heat under the earth together with the high pressure of rocks helped form fuels from those fossils.