Dinosaurs roamed the Earth over 200 million years ago and were the dominant terrestrial vertebrate for 135 million years. It is believed their extinction came about because of changes in the climate they couldn’t adapt to. Birds are the closest relative to a dinosaur that we have. Below are some interesting facts about dinosaurs.

• In the 1993 movie, Jurassic Park, there is only 15 minutes of dinosaur footage: 6 minutes of CGI and 9 minutes of animatronics.
• People have only been on Earth about 2.5 million years. Dinosaurs lived on Earth for about 160 million years, which is about 64 times longer than people been around.

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• The name "Velociraptor" means speedy thief.
• In 2015, scientist discovered a new dinosaur species. They nicknamed it "Hellboy" because the stubby horns above its eyes looked like the comic book character of the same name. They also had a "hellish" time excavating it from hard rock.
• The only known example of the giant sauropod Seismosaurus appears to have choked to death on a stone it was trying to swallow to use as a gastrolith.
• A T-rex bite was more than twice as powerful as a lion's bite.
• Dinosaur skulls had large holes or “windows” that made their skulls lighter. Some of the largest skulls were as long as a car.
• Dinosaurs lived on all the continents, including Antarctica.
• Colorado’s nickname is the Stegosaurus State. The first ever Stegosaurus skeleton was found near Morrison, Colorado.
• Some of the biggest plant eaters had to eat as much as a ton of food a day. This is similar to eating a bus-sized pile of vegetation every day.
• Though mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, and Dimetrodon are commonly believed to be dinosaurs, they are not technically dinosaurs. The term “dinosaur” refers to just land-dwelling reptiles that have a specific hip structure, among other traits.
• While many people think dinosaurs were massive, dinosaurs were usually human sized or smaller. Scientists believe that the larger bones were just easier to be fossilized.
• Meat-eating dinosaurs are known as theropods, which means “beast-footed,” because they had sharp, hooked claws on their toes. In contrast, plant-eating dinosaurs tended to have blunt hooves or toenails.
• Some dinosaurs’ tails were over 45 feet long. Most dinosaurs had long tails that helped them to keep their balance when running.
• Dinosaurs were reptiles that lived on Earth from about 230 million years ago to about 65 million years ago.
• The earliest named dinosaur found so far is the Eoraptor (“dawn stealer”). It was so named because it lived at the dawn of the Dinosaur Age. It was a meat eater about the size of a German shepherd. The first Eoraptor skeleton was discovered in Argentina in 1991. However, another dinosaur has recently been found in Madagascar that dates as being 230 million years old. It has not been named yet.
• Dinosaurs are divided into two groups by the structure of their hipbones. In the hips of saurischian, or lizard-hipped, dinosaurs, one of the bones pointed forward. In the hips of ornithischian, or bird-hipped, dinosaurs, all the bones pointed backward. Ironically, scientists believe that birds evolved from lizard-hipped dinosaurs, not bird-hipped dinosaurs.
• The word “dinosaur” was coined by British paleontologist Richard Owen in 1842. It is Greek, meaning “terrible lizard.” Rather than implying that dinosaurs were fearsome, Owen used the term to refer to their majesty and size.
• The first dinosaurs that appeared during the Triassic Period 230 million years ago were small and lightweight. Bigger dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus and Triceratops appeared during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
• The dinosaur with the longest name is Micropachycephalosaurus (“small thick-headed lizard”). Its fossils are usually found in China.
• Dinosaurs dominated Earth for over 165 million years. Humans have been around for only 2 million years.
• Many scientists believe that a massive meteorite hit the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico 65.5 million years ago and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs as well as the pterosaurs and plesiosaurs. The 112-mile-wide crater was caused by a rock 6 miles in diameter. It would have hit Earth’s crust with immense force, sending shockwaves around the world. No land animal heavier than a large dog survived. However, animals such as sharks, jellyfish, fish, scorpions, birds, insects, snakes, turtles, lizards, and crocodiles survived.

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