The archosaurian reptiles known as Dinosaurs, or Dinosauria, existed from 230 million years ago until the present. Based on three genera—Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus—the anatomist Sir Richard Owen first defined dinosaurs as a group in a presentation in 1841, making them perhaps some of the most well-known animals to have ever lived on Earth. With the exception of birds, dinosaurs presently comprise more than a thousand species, hundreds of taxa, and about thirty families. When the first Jurassic Park and its sequels were released in 1993, dinosaurs saw a significant increase in popularity. The birds, the only theropod family to survive the Cretaceous extinction, are the only dinosaurs still alive today. The only extant sister group of dinosaurs is the crocodilians. The pterosaurs were the closest extinct group to the dinosaurs. The word dinosaur literally means "terrible lizard" and comes from Greek. Despite their name, dinosaurs are not closely related to lizards, and many of them actually had feathers to some extent. All dinosaurs that were not birds have gone extinct.
Using conserved DNA found in fossilized amber, InGen was able to successfully clone dinosaurs in the 1980s. Although there is some disagreement about whether dinosaurs had warm or cold blood, the Jurassic World website states that herbivores had cold blood and carnivores had warm blood.
Prehistoric crocodiles, mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pliosaurs, pterosaurs, and early synapsids like Dimetrodon are among the several prehistoric species that are commonly referred to as "dinosaurs" but are not taxonomically classed as such. Although this is discouraged in scientific writing, it is nonetheless prevalent in the media and in casual conversation.
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Dinosaurs Pterosaurs Aquatic Creatures Mammals and Synapsids Humans | ||