One of the great things about science is how we’re literally always discovering new things. Not only that, scientists get a little thrill at getting to revise and update previous work, so no one is ever going to pretend like a new discovery didn’t upend everything we believed yesterday.
Which means there are always new and cool dinosaur facts floating to the surface, and even if you’re not a kid anymore, there’s no reason not to love these 16 fun tidbits of information.
16. It’s tough to picture.
T-rex didn’t have exposed teeth. It had full lip cover. they can be absolutely sure about this because the tooth enamel wouldnt survive constant exposure.
Most artists assumed a T-rex jaw would look like a crocodile jaw, but never considered that the croc’s teeth are protected by the water
15. That seems like an easy thing to fix.
Here’s a fun movie trivia fact from a famous dinosaur movie:
Do you remember in Jurassic Park the mosquito stuck in the amber where they supposedly got the DNA from?
Well, that is an elephant mosquito, the only mosquito that doesn’t suck blood, so it couldn’t possibly contain any dinosaur DNA.
14. Bless his heart.
My son somehow thinks its a travesty that they don’t exist anymore and will sit up at night and be upset he can’t know all the answers to his dinosaur questions.
13. They’ve seen a lot of sh%t.
That Sharks where around before Dinosaurs and Trees.
12. Just for starters.
Iguanodon, the most abundant dinosaur of them all, lived on 5 continents.
T. rex had a bite force of 6 tons.
Stegosaurus would flush blood through its plates, most likely to intimidate predators or attract mates.
The leg bones of large sauropods like argentinosaurus or seismosaurus could be 20 feet tall and weigh as much as a ton.
11. They’re running out of names.
There’s a dinosaur that was discovered in Australia near a Qantas airport, so they named it Qantassaurus.
10. I would have liked to have seen that.
Some herbivores didn’t join the adult herd until juveniles and were big enough. Before that, some lived in the forest/jungle in baby herds. For safety.
9. Only the birds survived.
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago, although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is the subject of active research.
They became the dominant terrestrial vertebrates after the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event 201.3 million years ago; their dominance continued through the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
The fossil record demonstrates that birds are modern feathered dinosaurs, having evolved from earlier theropods during the Late Jurassic epoch. As such, birds were the only dinosaur lineage to survive the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event approximately 66 million years ago.
Dinosaurs can therefore be divided into avian dinosaurs, or birds; and non-avian dinosaurs, which are all dinosaurs other than birds.
8. And we probably never will.
We don’t actually know how they looked like when they were alive, we just think they look like what they’re perceived as.
Same with sounds. We just made up what we think they would have sounded like and everyone went with it.
7. It’s hard to imagine.
Tyrannosaurus Rex and Stegosaurus were evidently never on the planet together…separated by millions of years ¯_(ツ)_/¯ fake news museums will have you believe otherwise with their standard fight scenes…
6. Poor Newman.
Dilophosaurus (the one with the neck fans that pop out and rattles) doesn’t look like it does in Jurassic Park. They’re bigger (10ft tall), they don’t spit acid/venom, and don’t have neck umbrellas.
That’s actually part of the plot in the novel. The scientists were surprised by both of those things the the first ones were cloned, as neither thing showed up in the fossil record. (How much of this stuff was intentionally added by the InGen scientists for a “wow” factor is up for debate.) That section of the novel was always one of my favorites, as it always made me wonder what else we assume about fossils when so much of the original animal is missing.
Crichton knew there was no evidence of the hoods or venom when he wrote the book, and thought the idea of something so defining to the fictional species being something the fossil record couldn’t indicate was interesting.
5. Now it’s canon.
When the T-Rex attacks the kids in the Jeep, the glass was supposed to break. Instead, the entire pane fell on the kids as a thousand pound animatronic pushed it down on them. Their screams of terror in that scene are real.
4. Well I’m off to Google.
Ooh, my time to shine! My username is of an ancient now extinct animal, though not technically a dinosaur. Kubanochoerus used to be this humungous unicorn pig, like a half ton boar with a big old horn in the middle of its forehead.
Pretty bada$s of you ask me.
3. Just lick it.
When you are looking for dinosaur bones you can tell the difference between a fossil and a rock by touching your tongue to it. If it “sticks” a bit and kinda sucks back it is porous and probably bone.
2. It was a long wait.
I hope I’m regurgitating this fact correctly, but It took the triceratops longer to evolve to have horns than the amount of time they’ve been extinct.
1. A goofball dinosaur.
Therizinosaurus was a large, bipedal herbivore that occupied an ecological niche akin to that of the giant ground sloths of the Pleistocene: using its meter-long claws to pull down tree branches. It looked goofy as hell, like an eight-meter long turkey, especially since it was likely to have had at least some feathery integument.
The real kicker? It was a cousin of T. rex. Yes, that guy. One of the most terrifying carnivores ever to walk the earth had a vegetarian Edward Scissorhands for a cousin. And, yes, it likely used those scythe-like claws for defense, too.
These are all going straight into my brain and never leaving. It’s where they belong!
If you’ve got a favorite dino fact and it’s not on this list, share it with us in the comments.
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