Right now, I’m in an “Age of Dinosaurs” class at Salem State University, and while I’m not going to teach you about all the things that we’ve been learning over the course of this semester, I am going to tell you five really interesting things about this topic. In taking this class in order to fulfill a gen-ed, I wasn’t interested in the topic as first, and no, I have never been through a “dinosaur” phase. The stuff I’ve been learning in this class is truly interesting though, and has opened my eyes not only to what the world of science is like, but what our world was like in general.
1. Humans and Dinosaurs never walked the earth at the same time
That’s right! The Flintstones lied! Humans showed up on earth millions of years after Dinosaurs were extinct. Dinosaurs died 65 million years ago, while Humans first appeared between five and seven million years ago.
2. Most dinosaurs were herbivores
You heard right. By looking at the fossilized feces, tooth and jaw fossils and different body structures, most dinosaurs ate only vegetation. The only Dinosaurs that did eat meat, however, was this crazy fast group called “Therapods”, most of these dinosaurs were small or medium sized (think the size of a chicken), and the most famous, the Tyrannosaurus, being about 42ft long.
3. There is no such thing as a flying dinosaur
Ever heard of a Pterodactyl? Yeah, not a dinosaur… they were a kind of flying reptile though. And, though birds did indeed evolve from Dinosaurs, no Dinosaurs could fly; some had hollow bones, some had feathers and some even had the same respiratory systems as birds (which is very complicated, which they need to fly), but each characteristic was formed separately… until birds.
4. A chicken is a Dinosaur
And here we are. Yep, a chicken, as well as most other birds, are all descended from Dinosaurs. In particular, those meat eating dinosaurs, like the Tyrannosaurus? Yep, that turned into a chicken 66 million years later. No one is completely certain what wiped out the Dinosaurs, though it was probably a meteor that changed the vegetation on earth which disrupted Dinosaur’s herbivore diets. This makes sense, if only the small, ‘chicken sized’ meat eaters were the only dinosaurs to survive and evolve.
5. The “Brontosaurus” may never have existed
The way that naming Dinosaurs works, is that if someone found one and can prove that it’s different from one that may have already existed, then it’s new – yay! This is what happened to the Brontosaurus; however, there was already a Dinosaur discovered that mistakenly... was probably the same Dinosaur. In the late 1800’s, there was a huge rush between a couple of paleontologist, who rushed to find as many dinosaur bones as possible – thus called the Great Dinosaur Rush. In finding all these Dinosaurs, on of the scientists, Othniel Marsh, was over-eager, and gave two names to the same Dinosaur. In science, you usually stick with the first name that you give something. So, 130 years later, after discovering that these two dinosaurs are the same… say hello to the Apatosaurus!
And, of course, shout out to Mr. Spencer Lucas, who wrote our class textbook "Dinosaurs: The Textbook, sixth edition" for giving me all this lovely info; and my professor, James Cullen!
