Nespear

Brief information about dinosaurs and their extinction

Dinosaurs are fascinating creatures which lived on Earth for 165 million years which compared to modern humans (200,000 years) is a very long period. They were the dominant creatures in Mesozoic Era, especially the Triassic period. Some of them were really big. So big that some species of dinosaurs are like Patagotitan mayorum Patagotitan mayorum, the Titanosaur were the biggest terrestrial animals to ever exist. But some of them were small too. Some of them were the size of chickens. Well, technically the smallest dinosaur is Bee hummingbird.

In the early Mesozoic era, there was a supercontinent called Pangea. The supercontinent looked something like the one given in the picture below.

900 genera and 1000 species of non-avian dinosaurs are identified. They were spread on almost every continent after the supercontinent tore apart. Different dinosaurs found themselves in different climates. Some adapted while some couldn’t and died.




Birds are relatives of dinosaurs. It was controversial before but now it’s widely accepted. Scientists say that birds evolved from dinosaurs. birds are now recognized as being the sole surviving lineage of theropod dinosaurs. So yeah, technically dinosaurs still exist. Scientists say dinosaurs developed features for warmth but later they were used for flight.



Fossils of dinosaurs were first found in the early 18th century but the Chinese found them a long time ago they thought that those were the bones of dragons. The word “Dinosaur” was first coined by Sir Richard Owen in 1841 AD which means Terrible Lizards. Dinosaurs became an interest of all people and a lot of science fiction books and stories were written which also help in funding the research of dinosaurs and their fossils. Many museums were established and non-fiction books about dinosaurs also became popular.

Researchers found that dinosaurs’ brain was smaller than the brain of today’s crocodile. Which might be a sign of them being dumb. Researches show that they were unlikely to be capable of commuting through a vocal medium like us. So, Yes GOOD DINOSAUR was a lie. But they communicated through non-vocal acoustic methods and their early ancestors were mute. Some dinosaurs were herbivorous, some were carnivorous and even signs of cannibalism are also found by palaeontologists. And also therapods can open their mouth wider than in movie shows. [T-rex can open up to 63.5 degrees]

The Extinction

About 66 million years ago a meteor hit the earth on the Gulf of Mexico which was larger than mount Everest and that had the impact of billion of nuclear bomb explosions. That instantly killed dinosaurs in a 1500 KM radius and that caused 11 Richter scale earthquakes which might be the worst that any creature had ever experienced. The impact of that meteor was on the whole planet as a cloud covered the whole earth and stopped the global photosynthesis factory. In the Indian subcontinent, the volcano erupted and lava floods coved half of the continent. The global temperature increased rapidly killing most dinosaurs and the only small creatures that could survive later becomes modern animals like human beings.




If extinction never happened then we would not be what we are now. The world would have been really different if they hadn’t disappeared. We still have limited sources to tell about dinosaurs. Scientists can only make hypotheses and tell a possibility but nobody can tell what exactly happened. I often wonder if any creature is large and beautiful excited but the fossils never formed due to a number of reasons then we would never know about them. Even if a civilization of non-vertebrate kinds of creatures existed in the past then we would never know about them. The world is full of wonders.

Just based on the fossils we can’t tell how they were. They might have been full of colours with mind-blowing soft features, highly social, and with wonderful out of the world sounds. Just imagine! But they are often depicted as large and horrifying creatures. There is a possibility that our imaginations and scientific hypothesis are false based on only fossils and they were totally different from what we were like. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying palaeontology is stupid. It is definitely an awesome branch of science that has contributed a lot. But I’m just talking about a possibility.