Dinosaur Facts That Will Blow Your Mind
We've seen them in Dinosaur, Jurassic Park, and The Land Before Time, but how much do you really know about dinosaurs?
After speaking with paleontologist Dr. Kenneth Lacovara, I can honestly say — I didn't know as much as I thought! I mean, did you know dinosaurs likely didn't roar or that they still have living descendants today? What about the actual size of a velociraptor? There's more, too. From the speed of a T-Rex to a pterosaur's extensive wingspan, here are more fascinating dinosaur facts you probably didn't know.
Velociraptors weren't as big and threatening as you think.
Dr. Lacovara says, "Velociraptors are nowhere near the size they were in Jurassic Park. A velociraptor skull is about six inches — they're roughly turkey-sized. So think about velociraptor as a pissed-off turkey. The size of the velociraptor in Jurassic Park is more like the size of a dinosaur named Deinonychus, which would be a terrible thing to encounter. You would be dead quickly. They were human-sized, fast, bipedal predators, equipped with deadly sickle-shaped claws, and thanks to their specialized wrists, they could swing those claws sideways in a motion able to impale and gaff hook their prey in a single, deadly strike."
Hadrosaurs were EXTREMELY dangerous.
Hadrosaurs, also known as duck-billed dinosaurs, are often portrayed as friendly, approachable creatures. According to Dr. Lacovara, that's far from the truth. "Too often, they are portrayed as dopey, friendly, gentle giants. In Jurassic Park, you can walk up and pet them. In reality, they will kill you."He adds, "There are no safe dinosaurs. Stay away from dinosaurs."
T-Rex had exceptionally good eyesight, despite what movies may have made you think.
T-Rex are as dangerous as they've been portrayed. "They're the largest land predators ever. They had excellent vision. They could see you if you were standing still — they could smell you, too. Scientists estimate that those grapefruit-sized eyes could spot details with up to five times the sharpness of a falcon and 13 times better than a human. And, like birds and crocs today, T-Rex could see more colors than us, with vision extending into the ultraviolet range.""They were also fast — they could outrun the best Olympic sprinter."
But while you might not be able to outrun a T-Rex, you probably could out-maneuver one.
"They can't turn well. Their head and their tail are so far apart, there's a lot of angular momentum, making it hard to turn around quickly. So if you were to be confronted by a T-Rex, don't try to outrun it, try to out-maneuver it."
Some dinosaurs were precocial — meaning they were self-sufficient almost immediately after birth.
"Some, like titanosaurs, got up and walked away just like an antelope does today. Others gave birth to altricial babies — think a little baby robin that's totally helpless when it's born. Some dinosaurs were born like that."
The oldest known dinosaur is the Nyasasaurus, which lived roughly 237 million years ago.
"It lived in the Triassic period in Tanzania. It was small — maybe the size of a golden retriever. Other early dinosaurs are even smaller, more like the size of a house cat. They lived in a world dominated by crocodiles and other nasty reptilian beasts. Dinosaurs didn't become dominant until the Jurassic period, about 36 million years later."
Sorry, but pterosaurs are not dinosaurs.
"They're flying reptiles."
Pterosaurs were the first creatures to fly that were bigger than a bug. The largest had a wingspan of 36 feet — roughly the size of a small plane.
It's likely that dinosaurs didn't roar — they probably grumbled or whistled.
"Dinosaurs don't roar like lions. They don't have a larynx. They have an analogous or a syrinx like birds and crocodiles. They probably made low gargles and grumbles and could have even made low whistles and pops like birds do."
Birds are descended from dinosaurs.
"Your children's books lied to you about pterosaurs. The only dinosaurs that have ever flown are birds." Birds evolved from dinosaurs 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Park period.
Troodon were among the most intelligent dinosaurs.
Paleontologists measure dinosaur intelligence using a method called the encephalization quotient, in which their brain size is compared to their body size. "Troodon, a medium-sized feathered predator that lived in modern-day North America during the Cretaceous Period, is often considered one of the brainier dinosaurs because of its high EQ. However, Dr. Lacovara notes, "It's a crude measure. What is for sure is that dinosaurs were smart enough to be dinosaurs. Organisms tend to have the brains they need."
Dreadnoughtus would use its massive body weight to crush prey.
Dr. Lacovara estimates Dreadnoughtus was about 65 tons. "That's nine times the weight of the T-Rex and about 10 times heavier than a Boeing 737. So you are not gonna mess with a T-Rex. Dreadnoughtus could lean against a T-Rex and press it into a tree and kill it."
But of course, not all dinosaurs existed at the same time.
For example, Dreadnoughtus didn't live at the same time as T-Rex, and T-Rex didn't exist with Stegosaurus. "Dinosaurs spanned 165 million years. Most of them never saw each other. T-Rex lived 66 million years ago and walked among the fossil bones of dinosaurs that are older than our fossils of T-Rex."
Many animals, including frogs, turtles, sharks, clams, and fish lived millions of years before dinosaurs.
And contrary to what you may have heard, oil does NOT come from them.
"Sorry, Elon Musk," Dr. Lacovara says, claiming he once got into a "Twitter fight" with Elon over whether dinosaurs produced oil. "It comes from the smallest creatures, marine plankton. There would never be enough dinosaurs in the world to make all the petroleum that we have."
Evidence shows velociraptors had feathers — not scales like you've seen in the movies.
Deinonychus is another dinosaur believed to have had feathers.
Fossilized dinosaur poop is called coprolite.
Some dinosaur species could swim.
"To clarify, Mosasaurs and Plesiosaurs were not dinosaurs — they were reptiles, but dinosaurs could do some swimming, just like any vertebrae animal. There are places where paleontologists have seen a dinosaur trackway that appears to be going into a lake, then the tracks become lighter and lighter until you see a few scrapes on the ground where their claws were swishing against the mud as they swam out into the lake."
The colors we've seen attributed to dinosaurs are completely fabricated.
"The way we assess colors is by looking at modern analogs today. So for example, what color are really giant animals today? Well, disappointingly, they're gray — from whales to hippos and rhinos. So probably the really big dinosaurs were gray or very drab."
Smaller dinosaurs, however, were probably very colorful.
"They could have used their color for signaling. Today, we see animals use color for threat displays, mating displays, and camouflage, of course, so there are all kinds of uses for color and pattern that dinosaurs could have used, too."
In 2004, paleontologists found the skull of what was believed to be a new dinosaur species. It was named Dracorex hogwartsia, a nod to the Harry Potter books, and is known for its dragon-like head. But according to Dr. Lacovara, "there's convincing research that shows that Dracorex is really just a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus."
Pachycephalosaurs have high, dome-like skulls and were first discovered around the mid-1800s. "If true, the Dracorex name would go away, and it would just be called Pachycephalosaurus."
Spinosaurus fossils are among the hardest to find. Paleontologists first discovered them in the early 1900s — sadly, those fossils were later destroyed in a bombing.
"The fossils were first found in 1911 in Egypt. The bones were brought to the Bavarian Museum of Natural History and were on display for decades until those bones and the bones of three other species were destroyed in April of 1944 in an Allied bombing raid. They became known as the Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt — until paleontologists found more spinosaurus fossils in Morocco in 2014." Some scientists believe they were a swimming dinosaur.
Dinosaurs didn't roar at their food.
"Just think – you don't walk up to your salad and yell at it before you eat it. It would have scared off prey."
You can't de-extinct a dinosaur.
"The de-extinction portrayed in the Jurassic movies is probably not realistic. DNA is a water-soluble molecule and doesn't seem to persist that long. The oldest DNA that's been recovered from an organism so far is about 800,000 years, and the oldest environmental DNA is less than two million years. That's a long way from 66 million years and beyond. But scientists are, through genetic engineering, bringing back species that went extinct in the very recent past, such as the dodo, the marsupial wolf, and the mammoth." In April, scientists claimed to have resurrected the dire wolf over 12,000 years after it became extinct.
The asteroid event that caused dinosaurs to become extinct made global surface temperatures rise as hot as a toaster or pizza oven.
"Geophysicists estimate that within an hour of impact, global surface temperatures soared to somewhere between toaster oven and pizza oven. If you were on Earth that day, exposed on the surface with nowhere to hide, you were toast." Most surviving creatures were able to burrow beneath the surface.
Finally, the largest creature on Earth after the asteroid event was likely badger-sized.
Were you surprised by any of these facts? Have any others to share? Write them in the comments below.
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