Zoom Dinosaurs DINOSAUR QUESTIONS

What does the word dinosaur mean? What does saurus mean?, What does deinos mean?	What color were the dinosaurs?	How (and when) did the dinosaurs go extinct?	How many dinosaurs were there?
What was the biggest dinosaur?	What was the smallest dinosaur?	Which dinosaur was the largest meat-eater?	Were there more plant-eaters or meat-eaters?
How many teeth did T. rex have (and how big were they)?	What is the oldest dinosaur ever found?	What was the first dinosaur ever found?	Did birds evolve from the dinosaurs?
Were there any flying dinosaurs?	Were there any swimming dinosaurs?	How do you know what the enemies of a dinosaur were?	What kind of habitats did the dinosaurs live in?

A: For a page on the first dinosaur discoveries, click here.

A: Plates grew on Stegosaurus' back.

A: Brachiosaurus and some of the other large sauropods (the huge long-necked plant-eaters) needed to have large, powerful hearts and very high blood pressure in order to pump blood up the long neck to the head and brain. The head (and brain) of Brachiosaurus was held high (many meters) above its heart. This presents a problem in blood-flow engineering. In order to pump enough oxygenated blood to the head to operate Brachiosaurus' brain (even its tiny sauropod brain) would require a large, powerful heart, tremendously high blood pressure, and wide, muscular blood vessels with many valves (to prevent the back-flow of blood). Brachiosaurus' blood pressure was probably over 400 mm Mercury, three or four times as high as ours.

A: Apatosaurus was a sauropod, a type of plant-eating dinosaur that was not particularly intelligent when compared to other dinosaurs.

A: Alamosaurus lived in what is now Texas, It was a huge plant-eater whose main defense was its size (its tail may have also helped in defense).

A: For information on dinosaur skin, click here.

A: Apatosaurus swallowed leaves and other vegetation whole, without chewing them, and had gastroliths (stomach stones) in its stomach to help digest this tough plant material.

A: Huge sauropod footprints have been found, but determining which genus of sauropod dinosaur made which footprint is almost impossible.

A: Velociraptor was about 6 feet long and about 3 feet tall.

A: None have been found - for a list of dinosaurs found in Europe (country by country), click here.

A: No, but both Anatotitan and Anatosaurus were duck-billed dinosaurs.

A: Click here.

A: Yes. In cladistics (a type of classification based on evolutionary relationships), you belong to the clade (the organizational group of cladistics) that your ancestors belonged to. Since dinosaurs are (probably) the ancestors of birds, birds (even chickens) are dinosaurs.

A: Troodontids were fast-running, intelligent theropods (meat-eating dinosaurs) with large eyes and many sharp teeth in long jaws. Troodon was a genus of Troodontid. For information on Troodon, click here. For information on Velociraptor, click here.

A: Baryonyx is classified as a spinosaur because of its crocodile-like conical teeth and long jaws. Baryonyx's jaws, teeth, hip structure, and many other characteristics are completely unlike those of Segnosaurus (which is classified as a therizinosaur).

A: No, Velociraptor was about 6 feet long from the snout to the end of the tail, but was not nearly that tall (even though it pictured that big in the Jurassic Park movie).

A: They're called paleontologists.

A: For a page on Carnotaurus, click here.

A: Archaeoraptor

A: Mary Anning lived on the southern coast of England, in Lyme Regis. If she had lived in an area without fossils, she would have probably not have found fossils (she began collecting local fossils as a girl).

A: The dinosaurs are divided by hip structure into Saurischians and Ornithischians.

A: Tyrannosaurus is the name of a genus of meat-eating dinosaurs that includes many species, including the species Tyrannosaurus rex (also called T. rex)

A: Anchisaurus was found in Massachusetts by Marsh (named in 1885). Other Massachusetts dinosaurs include Podokesaurus (named by Talbot in 1911) and fossilized dinosaur footprints (found by Edward Hitchock). I haven't heard of any other dinosaurs found in Massachusetts.

A: The latest famous discovery is the second-largest sauropod found yet. Paralititan (meaning "tidal Titan") was a huge titanosaurid sauropod that lived during the middle Cretaceous period, about 100 million years ago. This plant-eating dinosaur lad a long neck, small head, bulky body, and long tail. It was about 78-100 ft long (24-30 m long) and weighed perhaps 70 tonnes. Fossils were found in Bahariya Oasis, Egypt. Paralititan was named by Joshua B. Smith, Lamanna, Lacovara, Dodson, Smith, Poole, Giegengack and Attia in 2001. The type species is P. stromeri (2001, named to honor Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach, a German paleontologist and geologist who found dinosaurs in this area in the early 1900's).

A: Most extinctions are background extinctions, extinctions that do not occur during a mass extinction, but occur relatively constantly throughout time. They are caused by a lack of adaptation as things like competitors, food sources, weather, niches, symbionts, etc. change.

A: This isn't known (there is no fossil evidence that indicates this). For information on Carcharodontosaurus, click here.

A: Click here for a page on komodo dragons.

A: For a page on Cretaceous period plants, click here.

A: Click here.

A: Click here.

A: Saltopus was a carnivore (a meat-eater).

A: The shrew has a miuch faster metabolism and respiration rate than the elephant does.

A: Click here.

A: Glyptodon lived during the Pleistocene, between about 2 million and 15,000 years ago.

A: The tertiary period lasted from about 65 to 1.8 million years ago.

A: Yes, they probably did.

A: I doubt that anyone has ever counted the number of fossilized dinosaur bones found per state (I certainly haven't). The greatest number of dinosaur genera have been found in Montana. For dinosaur finds listed state by state, click here.

A: Pteranodon and Pterodactylus were both genera of Pterosaurs (flying reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs). Pteranodon was much bigger, had a head crest, and lived millions of years later than Pterodactylus.

A: Click here.

A: The classification of birds has been changing radically recently - it is being revamped using DNA anayses.

A: For information on Troodon, click here.

A: The remaining dinosaurs died at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago.

A: It's a new dinosaur called Paralatitan, recently found in Egypt.

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