The Chicxulub impact about 66 million years ago, roughly 10 km wide, triggered the mass extinction of non-bird dinosaurs.
Wacky Facts
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Crocodiles survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
Their ancestors lived alongside dinosaurs; being able to go long periods without food may have helped them survive.
T. rex lived closer in time to us than to Stegosaurus.
Stegosaurus lived about 150 million years ago; T. rex about 68–66 million years ago — a gap larger than the one between T. rex and today.
Birds are living dinosaurs.
Birds evolved from small feathered theropod dinosaurs, the same group that includes Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.
Amber can preserve insects for tens of millions of years.
Tree resin that hardens into amber can trap insects, feathers and even a dinosaur tail section found in Myanmar.
Velociraptor was about the size of a turkey.
The real animal was around 2 m long including its tail and covered in feathers, unlike the large scaly film versions.
Some dinosaurs had feathers but could not fly.
Feathers probably evolved first for warmth and display; flight came later in some lineages.
Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent.
Including Antarctica, which was once warmer and in a different position.
Stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut.
Its brain was tiny for a body about 9 m long.
The biggest dinosaurs were longer than three buses.
Sauropods such as Argentinosaurus may have reached around 30–35 m in length.
India has one of the world’s largest dinosaur egg sites.
Hundreds of titanosaur nests with fossil eggs have been found in the Narmada valley in Madhya Pradesh.
Some dinosaurs swallowed stones to digest food.
Gastroliths helped grind plant matter, as they do in birds like chickens today.
1842The word “dinosaur” means “terrible lizard”.
Richard Owen coined the name in 1842 from Greek deinos (terrible) and sauros (lizard).
Sharks are older than trees.
Sharks appeared more than 400 million years ago, before the first true trees evolved around 385 million years ago.