101 Amazing Facts about Dinosaurs

By Jack Goldstein

Did you know there is a species of dinosaur named after Hogwarts? Which were the largest and smallest dinosaurs? What is the difference between a brontosaurus and an apatosaurus? This excellent book answers all of these questions and more, with over one hundred facts about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AUK Authors
• Release date: Jan 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783335305

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The Basics

The word dinosaur was invented in 1842 by a British palaeontologist called Robert Owen. It means ‘terrible lizard’ when translated from the Greek words deinos and sauros.

When talking about dinosaurs, one is most commonly referring to reptiles that lived on the earth between 231.4 million years and 66 million years ago.

To put this into perspective, humans have lived on the earth for around two million years, whereas dinosaurs roamed for more than eighty times that!

This period is known as the Mesozoic era, which means ‘middle life’ (referring to the age of the earth itself). It is further split into three periods: Triassic (231.4 - 201 million years ago), Jurassic (201 - 145 million years ago) and Cretaceous (145 - 66 million years