They could have been big and scary, but Dinosaurs No lumberjacks. The more we learn about them, the more we see how wrong our early assumptions were.
Here are seven big ways our understanding of dinos has changed…
1. Tyrannosaurus rex
In 1902, in the desolate badlands of Hell Creek, Montana, paleontologist Barnum Brown found a large number of bones, 120 years after Brown’s discovery. D. Rex Skeletons have been found in 66-million-year-old Cretaceous rocks of North America. Scientists still think D. Rex One of the largest and strongest carnivores in Earth’s history.
But the 'Tyrant Lizard King’ isn’t just brutal. It had a large brain and senses of smell and hearing, as CAT scans of fossil skulls revealed. What made the T. rex so special was that it had brawn and brains…and its body had at least some smart feathers.
Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine and other 'disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.
5. Stegosaurus
Everyone knows Stegosaurus The profile today: long body, low shoulders and a row of large vertical plates on its back – each large enough to dwarf a coffee table.
But when Stegosaurus The bones were first discovered in North America’s Jurassic-age rocks (about 150 million years old) in the 1870s, and paleontologists had never seen anything like them.
A prickly Yale professor, Othniel Charles Marsh thought they belonged to some strange, new aquatic creature, a turtle, perhaps, with plates lying flat on its back.
This inspired the name: Stegosaurus’The Roofed Lizard.’
„Oddany rozwiązywacz problemów. Przyjazny hipsterom praktykant bekonu. Miłośnik kawy. Nieuleczalny introwertyk. Student.