Millions of
years ago,
Great beasts called
"dinosaurs" thundered
over the earth.
Yet up until the last
century, when the
first dinosaur fossils
were discovered, no
one even imagined
such animals existed.
Dinosaurs
Before there were any people there
were dinosaurs.
 Dinosaurs were one of several kinds
of prehistoric reptiles that lived during
the Mesozoic Era the “Age of the
Reptiles”
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The name dinosaur comes from the
term Dinosauria, which means
terrible lizards.
Dinosaur is the name of a group of
prehistoric reptiles that ruled the earth
about 160 million years ago.
 These animals died out millions of
years ago, but they have fascinated
people ever since they were first
described in the early 1800’s.
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Kinds of
Dinosaurs
Allosaurus
Do you know
what the
Utah State
Fossil is?
The Utah State Fossil:
The Allosaurus
The allosaurus was designated
the State Fossil in 1988. More
allosaurus specimens have been
found in two of Utah's quarries
than any other dinosaur. Sixty
individuals, from
juveniles to adults, were found
Big Al
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Nickname: Different Lizard
Age: 160-145 million years ago during the
late Jurassic Period
Size: 35-40 feet long (as long as two big
Python snakes!)
Weight: Anywhere from 2 tons to over 5
tons
Characteristics: Sharp claws up to 6 inches
long. Teeth up to almost 4 inches long
Special Talents: Super smart compared to
other dinosaurs. Extremely fierce. Known
to attack other dinos twice his size.
Where Dinosaurs Lived
•See the world as it looked during
the Jurassic Period!
•The Jurassic climate was warm
•The Air was damp, like a tropical fores
Paleontology

Paleontology (PAY lee ahn TAHL uh jee), is
the study of animals, plants, and other
organisms that lived in prehistoric times
(more than 5,500 years ago). Fossil remains
of organisms occur in layers of sedimentary
rocks (rocks formed when mineral matter
settled out of air, ice, or water). The
organisms that are now fossils were alive
when the rocks were being formed. They
were buried and preserved as the layers of
rock piled up.
So what do you think
a Paleontologist is?
A paleontologist
is a scientist
who studies
paleontology,
learning about
the forms of life
that existed in
former geologic
periods, chiefly by
studying fossils.
Fossils are the reason we have most of this
information. For almost 200 years,
paleontologists have been discovering fossils all
over the world. They’ve identified more than
330 different kinds of dinosaur fossils. And
every year, they find new fossils. These fossils
can tell us how big an animal grew, what it ate,
even how it died.
Dinosaur National Monument
Utah/Colorado
A stony frieze at one of the continent’s largest
and richest dinosaur quarries holds the bones of
beasts that ruled the Jurassic: stegosaurs,
allosaurs, apatosaurs and many more.
The first dinosaur to be described
scientifically was Megalosaurus
in 1824, by William Buckland.
Buckland (1784-1856) was a
Britishfossil hunter and
clergyman who discovered
some Megalosaurus fossils in
1819 and named the reptile
in 1824. It was the first dinosaur
ever described scientifically and
first theropod dinosaur discovered
(this is all in hindsight, because the dinosaurs had not yet been
recognized as a separate taxonomic group - the word dinosaur
hadn't even been invented yet).
Megalosaurus
Did They Have Colors?
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It is very difficult to figure out how the
dinosaurs sounded, how they
behaved, or what color they were.
Plant-Eaters
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Most dinosaurs were plant-eaters like:
Triceratops
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What do we call plant-eaters?
Herbivores
Meat-Eaters
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Some were meat-eaters like:
T-Rex
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What do we call meat-eaters?
Carnivores
The Food Chain
Meat-eating animals (carnivores like Tyrannosaurus rex)
get their energy by eating other animals, mostly plant-eating
animals (herbivores like Triceratops). The herbivores
get their energy by eating plants (like cycads).
Where Did Everybody Go?
You may have
noticed that there
are no dinosaurs
around these days.
In fact, there haven't
been any around for
about 66 million
years.
Well, we don’t know the
real absolute theory of
how they became
extinct, but---One thing for sure is……….
 We will have an incredible time going
back in time to learn about these
marvelous creatures.
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