A: Yes. For more information on emus, click here.

A: For a list of digs you can join, click here.

A: For information on Nemegtosaurus, click here.

A: Yes, there were mammals during the Jurassic period (they had evolved earlier, during the Triassic period. Some Jurassic period mammals included Morganucodontids (like Morganucodon and Megazostrodon), Haramiyids (like Haramiya), Docodonts (like Docodon), multiberculates, symmetrodonts, pantotheres, and a recently-found, mouse-sized Middle Jurassic mammal (a tribosphenidan) from Madagascar.

A: Yes, Albertosaurus, Ankylosaur (an unknown genus), Edmontosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus, Saurornitholestes, Thescelosaurus, and Troödon. For more dinosaur finds, listed state, by state (and country by country), click here.

A: For information on snakes, click here.

A: Yes. For information on Carnotaurus, click here.

A: No, not all are. Nektonic (nektos is Greek for "swimming") animals are those marine creatures that are able to swim against the current. Fish, whales (who are warm-blooded), and many other orgaisms are nektonic. n

A: In the movie 'Jurassic Park,' they had Dilophosaurus spitting, but there is no fossil evidence that this actually happened Q: WHAT IS THE LONGEST NAME FOR A DINOSAUR
from IAN, CARDIFF, ?, U K; June 27, 2000

A: Micropachycephalosaurus.

A: There were no aquatic dinosaurs, but there were some huge, aquatic reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosuar, including plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, nothosaurs, etc. The largest-known plesiosaur is Liopleurodon.

A: Baryonyx was found in a clay pit in Surrey, England by William Walker.

A: No one knows how dinosaurs reproduced. No on knows how they mated and/or courted.

A: For information on the first dinosaur finds, click here.

A: Click here for information on Triceratops. For a Triceratops printout, click here.

A: Many of the larger sauropods weighed that much. Adult elephants weigh about 6 tons (5,400 kg). Many dinosaurs weighed more than 72 tons, including Argentinosaurus, Seismosaurus, Ultrasauros, Brachiosaurus, etc.

A: Some dinosaurs swallowed stones, which remained in their stomach, helping to grind up tough plant material. These stones are called gizzard stones (they are also called gastrliths). Many modern-day birds also swallow gizzard stones.

A: No one knows how many dinosuars there were. About a thousand different genera have been found so far (any many more species). Most existing fossils probably haven't been found, and most types of dinosaurs probably did not fossilze.

A: Styracosaurus had many spikes and horns on its head. For a large picture, of Styracosaurus, click here.

A: The new dinosaurs at the Field Museum in Chicago, IL, USA is the T. rex called Sue. They didn't find it, they bought it.

A: This is the CyberSafari question we just put up, so I can't answer your question (but the answer is on Zoom Dinosaurs somewhere).

A: Only a very small percentage of paleontologists use the grouping Phytodinosauria (Sauropodomorpha plus Ornithischia), grouping all the plant-eating dinosaurs together. Most paleontologists use hip structure to separate Ornithischians from Saurischians first (believing that this how evolutionary progressed). In this system, Sauropods are closer to (meat-eating) theropods than to ornithischians.

A: Quaesitosaurus had a large resonating chamber in its middle ear. Living animals with large eyes generally have good eyesight (and animals wih small eyes ofen have poor vision), so when an extinct animal had large eyes (judged by the bones in its skull), it probably had keen eyesight.

A: Brontosaurus is now called Apatosaurus. Click here for information on Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus.

A: Quaesitosaurus is pronounced kwee-SEE-toh-SAWR-us.

A: Yes; the continent of Antarctica wasn't nearly as cold during the Mesozoic Era (when the dinosaur lived) as it is now. This is because Antarctica was not at the South Pole then, and the Earth was warmer in general. For a list of known Antarctic dinosaurs, click here.

A: Gallimimus (which means "rooster mimic") was found in Mongolia. For more information on Gallimimus, click here.

A: Brachiopods are a phylum of animals also known as lamp shells (bottom-dwelling marine invertebrates that have two protective shells and tentacles); they superficially look like mollusks.

For information on trilobites, click here.

Bryozoans (also called moss animals or sea mats) are a phylum of small invertebrate animals that live in salt water (or occasionally in fresh water). Bryozoans live in colonies of many polyps. They have ciliated tentacles and a hard, box-like, calcium carbonate skeleton. Bryozoans date from the Early Ordovician, roughly 400 million years ago.

Horn coral is a type of large, horn-shaped coral (order Rugosa) that lived as a solitary individual or as a colony. This invertebrate evolved during the Ordovician Period, roughly 500 million years ago. Horn corals are important index fossils. Their fossils are also sometimes used to determine the length of the day (and the year) in the distant past due to the manner in which they grew.

A: Yes, but it's more complex than than. In cladistics, a type of classification of organisms in which evolutionary relationships determine the classification, birds are dinosaurs (if indeed they descended from dinosaurs). So Archaeopteryx (and all birds) belong to the clade of dinosaurs. Q: Is a Carnotaur an actual dinosaur or is it just a fictitious name used in Disney's DINOSAUR movie? If it is real, can you tell me something about it?
from Michael M, Hicksville, NY, USA; June 22, 2000

A: Carnotaurus was a real dinosaur. For information on Carnotaurus, click here.

A: Archaeopteryx is the oldest-known bird; it dates from about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic period. For more information on Archaeopteryx, click here.

A: Pterodactyls were a group of flying reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs. They were closely related to the dinosaurs. For more information on Pterodactyls, click here.

A: Ornithopods are a suborder of ornithischian dinosaurs that have no hole in the outer, lower jaw and a long pubis that extends farther forwards than than the ilium (Paul Sereno, 1986). Ornithopods were beaked, bipedal, herbivorous (plant-eating) dinosaurs that lived from the late Triassic to the late Cretaceous. Ornithopods are divided into the groups: Hadrosaurs, Hypsilophodontids, Iguanodontids, and Fabrosauria. Drinker, Iguanodon, Hypsilophodon, Muttaburrasaurus, Leaellynasaura, and Othnielia are examples of ornithopods.

A: Yes. For more information on Brachiosaurus, click here.

A: Click here for the major dinosaur families.

A: For information on the first dinosaur fossils found, click here.

A: Megalodon lived from roughly 25 to 1.6 million years ago, during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs. It is now extinct, but the exact time of its extinction is hotly debated. The cause of its extinction is unknown. For more information on Megalodon, click here.

A: That sounds fine, except I would start one step up to show the relationships between the groups (e.g., suaropods being closer to theropods than ornithopods). You could first divide dinosaurs into the saurischians (lizard-hipped) and ornithischians (bird-hipped). Then you could divide these orders into suborders. Saurischians are divided into the theropods (meat-eaters) and sauropodamorpha (long-necked plant-eaters: sauropods and prosauropods). Ornithischians are divided into: Ornithopoda (Hadrosaurs, Hypsilophodontids, Iguanodontids, Fabrosauria), Marginocephalia (Ceratopsians, Pachycephalosauria), and Thyreophora (Stegosaurids, Ankylosaurids).

For a page on this classificaiton of the dinosaurs, click here.

A: The prosauropods (which means "before sauropods") were similar to the sauropods and the groups overlapped in time (prosauropods lasted until the early Jurassic period), but differed in that prosauropods had a reduced fifth metatarsal (toe) as compared to sauropods and hooked thumb claws. The prosauropods may have been ancestral to sauropods, or they may have had a common ancestor.

A: Maiasaura was named by Jack R. Horner and Robert Makela in 1979. Marion Brandvold and her son David Trexler found a huge bonebed of Maisaura, nests, and babies in Montana (dubbed Egg Mountain), which contained had thousands of specimens. Laurie Trexler found the holotype of Maiasaura peeblesorum (the type species). For more information on Maiasaura, click here.

A: For a page on dinosaur museums (mostly those in the USA, Canada, and Australia), click here. A lot are really good, and they each have different types of exhibits. For more information on each of the museums, click on their name to go to their web page.

A: Heterodontosaurus was a plant-eater (an herbivore).

A: (pronounced MET-ri-oh-RINK-us) Metriorhynchus (meaning "moderate snout") was a crocodilian, an aquatic reptile that was up to 40 feet (12 m) long. It had a long, toothed snout, a fish-like tail, and four short limbs with webbed feet. The rear legs were longer than the front legs. Metriorhynchus had no back armor. It lived during the mid to late Jurassic period. Fossils have been found in Europe (France and England) and South America (Chile). Classification: Order Crococylia, Suborder Mesosuchia, Genus Metriorhynchus, many species.

A: Dinosaurs varied quite a bit in size, ranging from the size of chicken to over 100 feet long.

A: Allosaurus and Brachiosaurus were contemporaries, but Allosaurus was about half the size of Brachiosaurus, and probably could not kill a healthy adult.

A: Click here for dinosaur skeletons.

A: Probably not. It used be thought that some dinosaurs (like Stegosaurus and the large Sauropods) had a second brain at the base of their tail (in addition to the tiny one in their head). Scientists now think that the spinal structure at the tail base was not a brain, but simply an enlargement containing fatty tissue or nerves.

A: Yes, for information on Lufengosaurus, click here.

A: The dinosaurs went extinct during the K-T mass extinction, about 65 million years ago.

A: Pachycephalosaurus may have spent most of its time finding food. For information on Pachycephalosaurus, click here

A: Click here for a page on Minmi.

A: It isn't certain, but it may have looked like a great white shark. For information on Megalodon, click here.

A: About a thousand genera are known, and many more species, but these probably represent just a small fraction of the dinosaur genera that lived (and either didn't fossilize or haven't been found yet).

A: Sauropods probably had a life span on the order of a hundred years.

A: The dinosaurs are divided into two orders, Ornithischia and Saurischia. Within these orders are many families, lincluding stegosauria, ankylosauria, pachycephalosauria, tyrannosaurids, etc. Most paleontologists use cladistics (and not the linnean system). For a page explaining the classification of dinosaurs, click here. For a list of all the known dinosaur genera, click here.

A: There are a few place where huge amounts of dinosaur (and other fossils) have been found, including the Ghost Ranch (New Mexico), Dinosaur Ridge (Morrison, CO), many sites in Montana, Wyoming, Utah (USA), Argentina, Lianong (China), the Gobi desert, and many others. Fossil-rich deposits are called Lagerstatten.

A: Since the pigments in the dinosaurs' skin is not preserved in the fossilization process, we don't know what colors or patterns any of the dinosaurs were. Also, for most dinosaurs, skin imprints are not avaiable, so details in their outer structure (like dewlaps) are mostly unknown. Originally on Zoom Dinosaurs, we made all the dinosaurs plain, and included only the few anatomical details that were known (which means no pictures at all for most dinosaurs, except for a single tooth or a few bones). We recieved tons of (often extremely hostile) mail demanding "realistic" pictures, like our viewers had seen in dinosaur books written by reputable paleontologists and in museums. What we do (and most authors, illustrators and museums also do) is let people know that we have used educated guesses to fill in the details in our reconstructions for many anatomical structures that are as yet unknown (like skin color and pattern). Shows like the BBC's "Walking with Dinosaurs," are particularly guilty of adding far too many details (and behaviors) that are simply not known.

For example, for years we refused to put up a picture of Trachodon (since it is only known from some teeth). After receiving countless e-mails from frustrated kids who needed a picture of it for a school assignment, we added one, but noted that the drawing was based solely on characteristics of the teeth and its similarity to the teeth of other dinosaurs.

A: Yes. The earliest frogs (like Triadobatrachus, from Madagascar) appeared during the early Triassic, and the first true frogs (like Vieraella, from South America) appeared during the early Jurassic period.

A: The mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic Era (also the end of the Cretaceous period) was called the K-T extinction.

A: No, people evolved many millions of years after the dinosaurs died out.

A: See the frequently asked question above.

A: Ornithorhynchus anatinus. For more information on the platypus, click here.

A: No, but they did have a common maniroptor theropod ancestor. For dinosaur cladogram (diagram of evolutionary relationships), click here.

A: The most obvious differences between Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus are the legs and the neck. In Apatosaurus, the front legs were shorter than the rear legs, and it stood with its neck and head close to the ground. Brachiosaurus' front legs were longer than its rear legs and it had a giraffe-like stance.

A: Tyrannosaurus rex was up to 40 feet (12.4 m) long, about 15 to 20 feet (4.6 to 6 m) tall. It was roughly 5 to 7 tons in weight. For more information on T. rex, click here.

A: Oddly enough, it's spelled Pterodactyl. For information on these flying reptiles, click here.

A: For Apatosaurus, click here.

A: For Pachycephalosaurus, click here.

A: The first Stegosaurus fossil was found in 1876 by M. P. Felch. Paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh named Stegosaurus in 1877. For more information on Stegosaurus, click here.

A: Tyrannosaurus rex was up to 40 feet (12.4 m) long, about 15 to 20 feet (4.6 to 6 m) tall. It was roughly 5 to 7 tons in weight. For more information on T. rex, click here.

A: Yes, but most oil comes from plant material, which is much more abundant.

A: if you want to work with dinosaurs, some people work as professors (teaching paleontology and doing research), some people write about palentology, some people work as museum curators, fossil reconstructors, etc., and others are fossil hunters. Of course, some people do more than one of these.

A: Brontosaurus was changed to Apatosaurus. To read about the reason for this change, click here and scroll down o the section called "Fossils."

A: Click here for information on Maiasaura.

A: There are close to a thousand known dinosaur genera. There are many fewer families. The major families include theropods, sauropods (or sauropodomorphs), ornithopods (hadrosaurs, hypsilophodonts, Iguanodonts, and fabrosaurs), marginocephalians (ceratopsians and pachycephalosaurians), thyreophorans (stegosaurids and ankylosaurids).

A: Trodon was probably at the top of its local food chain. For information on Troodon, click here.

A: Megatherium was a giant ground sloth that lived during the last Ice Age. For information on megatherium, click here.

A: For an entry on him, click here.

A: Its huge size was its best defense. Janenschia's hindlimbs had claws that were up to 4 3/4 feet (1.38 m) long. It also had a long tail that may have been used to lash at predators. Janenschia, like some other titanosaurids, may have been covered with armored scales, but there is no fossils evidence of this. For more information on Janenschia, click here.

A: Click here and here for more details.

A: Some dinosaurs, like Maiasaura, cared for their young, This is known because many fossilized Maiasaura adults, nests, eggs, hatchlings, and juveniles were found together in a large bonebed. For most dinosaurs, however, nothing is known about how or if they cared for their young.

Many animals today do not care for their young. Sharks, for example, lay their eggs (or give birth to live young, depending upon the species) and do not give it any care.

A: It probably varied a lot depending on which type of dinosaur it was. The larger dinosaurs probably had a longer life span, and a longer time until reaching maturity. No one knows how old any dinosaur was at maturity.

A: I looked again, but there are no references to it. I'm pretty sure it hasn't been published yet.

A: The earliest known dinosaur so far are two prosauropods from Madagascar. The second-earliest dinosaur is a theropod from Argentina, called Eoraptor.

A: For information on Diplodocus, click here.

A: Albertosaurus probably had no large predators. I've never seen an estimate of its life span. There is no fossil evidence that indicates how ir even if it cared for its young. For informatino on Albertosaurus, click here. For information on the climate during the late Cretaceous period, click on that link on the Albertosaurus page.

A: Apatosaurus means "Deceptive Lizard." For more information on Apatosaurus, click here.

A: Archaeopteryx.

A: Juvenile Mussaurus (whose name means "mouse lizard") were only 9-16 inches long (18-37 cm) long. The weight of dinosaurs are only rough estimates, because all that is here today is fossilized bone (which are heavier that real bone). To determine the weight of a dinosaur, an accurate model must be made (which is often difficult or impossible) and then its density must be estimates (also a very iffy operation). This is why lengths are generally used for dinosaurs, and estimated weights are not well reported.

A: For a page on plesiosaurs, click here. For a page on ichthyosaurs, click here. For a page on mosasaurs, click here.

A: See the page on Stegosaurus. Its life span is unknown. For information on the climate it lived in, click on the link to the Jurassic period from the Stegosaurus page.

A: It varied with the size of the dinosaur. By the way, fossilized feces are called coprolites. A recently-found T. rex coprolite. This coprolite is a whitish-green rock 17 inches (44 cm) long, 6 inches (15 cm) high and 5 inches (13 cm) wide. Coprolites up to 40 cm (16 inches) in diameter have been found, probably from a sauropod, considering the size.

A: Fossilized dinosaur bones are found in rock sediment that are dated from about 230 million to 65 million years ago. No dinosaur fossils have been found in later sediment. Human bones are not found in sediment from the time of the dinosaurs (but the bones of other early mammals are).

A: No one knows.

A: No one knows how many dinosaur species (or even how many genera) there were. A little under a thousand genera have been found so far, but that is probably only a small fraction of the ones that lived. For a list of all known dinosaur genera, click here.

A: Muttaburrasaurus had a sharp beak and hoof like feet that would provide some protection. It may have had thumb spikes on each of its hands (hand bones haven't been found yet, but other iguanodontids did have these spikes).

A: No, Dimetrodon was pekycosaur, a different type of animal. For more information on Dimetrodon, click here.

A: The dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic Era. They peaked during the Cretaceous period (the latter third of the Mesozoic Era).

A: T. rex was named in 1905 by Henry Fairfield Osborn. For more information T. rex and its name, click here.

A: Dimetrodon went extinct in the huge Permian mass extinction (about 280 million year ago). For more information on Dimetrodon, click here.

A: No one knows about dinosaur reproduction other than they hatched from eggs.

A: Most were plant-eaters, some were meat-eaters and few were omnivores. For information on dinosaur diets, click here.

A: Pteranodon's wingspan averaged about 25 ft (7.8 m). For more information on Pteranodon, click here

A: Spinosaurus had pretty long legs; it was probably a fast runner. For information on Spinosaurus, click here.

A: Carcharodontosaurus means "Shark-tooth Lizard." For information on Carcharodontosaurus, click here

A: Click here and here for more details.

A: Ice Age.

A: For a list of all known dinosaur genera, click here (there were many species in each genus). These are genera the ones that people have found so far - this is just a fraction of the genera that existed.

A: Dinosaur fossils have been found on all seven continents, but there may have been some areas they didn't live in. For example, they may not have lived in extraordinarily dry deserts (like the Atacama desert) - but then again, they may have.

A: There were no fruits during the Jurassic period, since flowering plants hadn't evolved yet. For a page on Jurassic period plants, click here.

A: BAG-uh-CER-uh-TOPS, KAR-no-SAWR-us, PRO-toh-SER-ah-tops, and huh-RARE-ah-SAWR-us.

A: Click here for an entry on Vulcanodon.

A: There's no way to know what would might happened in that scenario.

A: For a page on dinosaur diets, click here.

A: I don't of any. If anyone out there knows of any, please write this page and I'll post the answer.

A: I've never seen a weight estimate for Moschops, but it was huge and stocky, about 16 feet (5 m) long. For a page on Moschops, click here.

A: Dinosaurs, like all other organisms, have to adapt to a constantly-changing environment or face extinction. They need to adapt to different food availability, ever-changing competitors and predators, extremes of heat and/or cold, too much or too little water, new disease organisms, etc.

A: Click here.

A: Click here for information on sedimentary rocks and their composition.

A: Nodosaurus was an herbivore (a plant-eater) that ate low-lying plants. For more information on Nodosaurus, click here.

A: About 200 - no complete skeletons have been found, though. For more information on T. rex, click here.

A: Stegosaurus.