Iguanodon

Iguanodon was one of the first dinosaurs ever discovered... when just a few people knew dinosaurs existed.

Iguanodon was the most common plant-eating dinosaur during the early Cretaceous period Here a herd of Iguanodon walk through the marshy forests that covered southern England at this time.

When a herd of this species was found in Bernissart, knowledge on dinosaurs was changed! from slowly rhinolike creatures they changed into ostrichlike creatures!

In fact, iguanodon's appearance changed a lot since its discovery. At the beginning it was depicted as a giant iguana with a rhinolikehorn!!!

Ophtalmosaurus

big eyed ichthy!

Ichtyosaurs

British girl Mary Anning discovered this awesome fossils in Britain.

they were undoubtely princes of the oceans!

Perhaps their reproductive mammal-like style is one of the most interesting facts about them.

Hybodus

Hybodus was an early shark from 149 million years ago, Late Jurassic period. Judging by the size of its teeth Hybodus was about 2 metres long and almost certainly had the typical streamlined shape that all sharks have had since their first appearance in the Devonian period, over 360 million years ago. Its jaws housed two types of teeth, reflecting a varied diet. One set was sharp, suitable for seizing slippery prey like fish and squid. Its other teeth were flat and strong, for crushing the casings of shelled animals like molluscs and sea urchins.

The little that palaeontologists do know about prehistoric sharks is mainly gleaned from their teeth, which are constantly being shed and replaced through its life. They are the only parts of its body that normally fossilise, and are relatively common. They are very abundant at some locations, and have been found in marine deposits of Jurassic age across the world.

Shark skeletons are made of cartilage not bone, and so do not fossilize well. However, there are rare fossils of its spiny dorsal fin. The fin might have been used as a means of defence - if another sea creature tried to swallow the shark, it could raise its dorsal fin to make this a difficult, unpleasant job.

Hesperornis

This giant bird (2m high) from late cretaceous made more use of its teeth than its wings.
Hesperornis had a sleek, feathered body and long legs with webbed feet. Its wings were small, used for steering when diving underwater. Its long jaws had many small sharp teeth. It was a marine predator, eating fish, ammonites and belemnites.
It lived in warm seas, coming ashore only to breed. Ungainly and vulnerable on land - Hesperornis couldn't walk - they crowded together in colonies for safety and chose inaccessible rocky outcrops.
Hesperornis spent most of its time floating on the sea surface. It travelled long distances by a combination of swimming and drifting. Hesperornis was a speedy swimmer, taking short dives to feed on shoals of fish or other passing food. Its legs could not support its weight so on land it had to push itself along on its belly. Unable to fly or walk, Hesperornis needed to be wary of predators: sharks and plesiosaurs at sea, dinosaurs and pterosaurs on land.

Halisaurus

The first mosasaur fossils were discovered around 1780, almost 50 years before the first dinosaur fossil.

Halisaurus was a mosasaur from late Cretaceous. But it was much smaller than its giant relatives like Hainosaurus. It loitered in submarine caves and and cracks. It may have waited around ledges above the water where hesperornis gathered.

When the hesperornis leave their rocky ledges to dive for fish, the halisaurus are down below, waiting for an opportunity to ambush them.

Mosasaur teeth are good at piercing the skin of their prey but bad at slicing flesh. So once halisaurus has caught its prey, it swallows it. Its jaw has flexible joints within it and can open incredibly wide.

Like other mosasaurs, Halisaurus has extra teeth called pterygoid teeth, that it uses to hold on to its prey while its jaw moves forward to swallow the hapless victim whole.

Hadrosaurs & T. rex

Ordering meal?

Hadrosaurs

These dinos arrived from North America were an intercontinental bond emerged during the Cretaceous.

Gobi Desert

Paleonthology's hotspot had a venomous KomododragonlikeLizard!

... as well as Garfield like troodontids!

Glennrose Trackway

Places like this one exist throughout the world!

Giganotosaurus in Land of Giants

At the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs many species crossed to South America, one of them were hadrosaurids!

It must have been a terrorrific vision for north american hadrosaurids after their arrival to South America.

Our largest carnivore dinosaur ever discovered.

Mosasaur dinner for Sharky and his buddies

For a big bully there is always a bigger bully! even during the cretaceous!

Sea monsters

During dinosaurs age the sea was ruled by gigantic marine reptiles, some of them were mosasaurs and pliosaurs.

They were really creepy monsters.

Attacking primitive ray, Tylosaurus was a late Cretaceous marine lizard carnivor of about 20-40' in length Remains have been found in Kansas. Creatures like this one ruled the seas.

Giant mosasaur

Reptiles like this one were the rulers of many seas by the Age of the Dinosaurs.

Mosasaur closeup

hot or not?

hahahaha!

Gasparinisauria

Casper had a dinopet! Check dinorte.cl

Triceratops

One of my favorite dinosaurs was this ceratopian!

Though it shared the landscape with and was preyed upon by the fearsome Tyrannosaurus, it is unclear whether the two battled the way they are commonly depicted in movies and children's dinosaur books.

Velocirraptors!

YIKES!

In Velociraptor's case, size did not matter. Velociraptor was a small dinosaur (2m long and 20 kg), but a highly efficient killer. Groups of Velociraptor would have been a common sight in the ancient Nemegt Desert. They were light and athletic dinosaurs capable of running fast and jumping.

Velociraptor probably hunted in packs, like modern dogs, as this would have allowed them to tackle prey considerably larger than them. Thanks to the famous 'fighting dinosaurs' fossil we know that Velociraptor hunted the stocky Protoceratops, but may also have hunted other smaller dinosaurs such as Mononykus and Oviraptor as well as mammals, lizards and insects.
Younger Velociraptor probably raided the eggs and hatchlings of the many dinosaurs that used the Nemegt Desert as a nesting ground.
If we assume that the dinosaur behaved like modern pack hunting animals, Velociraptor hunting groups would have attacked by cornering its prey and then mounting a simultaneous attack until it died of exhaustion or blood-loss. One particularly effective attack technique would be to jump at its victim with its claws outstretched. It would then drag a specially sharpened foot claw down the prey's skin, inflicting terrible wounds. Repeating this several times would have severely weakened any prey, hastening its death.
In many respects Velociraptor was the ideal predator for the desert-like conditions found in the Nemegt. It was light, manoeuvrable and able to hunt and live on smaller animals. The average Mongolian dinosaur would probably have been more terrified of meeting a pack of Velociraptor than a giant predator like Tarbosaurus.

The Evidence

Velociraptor was first discovered in the 1920s. But few people had heard of it until the 1990s, when the release of Steven Spielberg's blockbuster movie Jurassic Park made the dinosaur a household name.
In life, Velociraptor was under a metre high. But what it lacked in size, it made up for with a deadly array of weapons. It had razor-sharp claws on its hands and feet including an enlarged second toe claw that could swivel round to inflict horrific ripping wounds on its prey. It also possessed a long snout and a mouth laden with rows of sharpened teeth. These features made Velociraptor a killing machine.
In fact, Velociraptor is one of the few dinosaurs which we can say for certain was a predator. This is thanks to an extraordinary fossil that was discovered in Mongolia in 1971 showing a Velociraptor locked in combat with a Protoceratops. The Velociraptor is raking at the Protoceratops belly with its hind feet whilst the Protoceratops has the Velociraptor's arm in its beak. It is assumed that the two animals were overwhelmed by a sand storm whilst in mid-battle.
That an animal as small as Velociraptor could have attacked a dinosaur so much bigger than it suggests that Velociraptor may have hunted in packs.
One further remarkable find from Mongolia shows the fossilised skeletons of two juvenile Velociraptor in the nest of another dinosaur called Oviraptor. The two Velociraptor might have been in the process of raiding the nest when they were smothered by the shifting sands of the Nemegt desert.

Protoceratops

Protoceratops seems to have been so common in the Mongolian desert, that some paleontologists have nick-named it 'the sheep of the Cretaceous'.
Protoceratops was about the size of a large pig (400kg). Its stout frame would have provided it some protection against the sun and against water loss in the heat of the desert. It would have needed it, as we know that Protoceratops was living amongst the hot and dry giant sand dunes of the ancient Mongolian desert.
As a herbivore, Protoceratops would have had a hard time finding fresh leaves and shoots in the arid desert. So it may have preferred to feed on buried roots and tubers, using its sharp beak to slice through their toughened exterior.
Finding water supplies would also have been a problem. Protoceratops might have got some of its water from plants, but sometimes it would have needed to find a pond or stream to drink from.
Given its small size and abundance, Protoceratops would have sat firmly near the bottom of the food chain. The small dinosaur Velociraptor hunted Protoceratops so it is likely that other, larger dinosaurs, including Tarbosaurus, did too. Protoceratops had very few means of defending itself, though its powerful beak, stocky body and bony head armour would have afforded it some degree of protection.

Aside from predation, Protoceratops would also have faced the daily threat of being buried alive in the treacherous sand dunes of the desert.
Examine the evidence at BBC.co.uk/dinosaurs

Protoceratops Vs Velocirraptor

What we know today as Gobi Desert was once home for many dinosaurs, two of them were enemies until death spared them.

This fossil couple is sooooo amazing!

I wish I could be in front of them!

Feathered dinosaurs

Many palaeonthologists see in these dinosaurs the origin of birds.

Espetially after all the amazing discoveries that have been seen in China and Spain.

In China’s Dinosaur Pompey you can see most of the stages that seem to fit in order to get a bird from a dinosaur.

Seems like raptors hold most of the answers on this topic.

Eustreptospondylus - Late Jurassic (165-160mya)

Despite the limited fossil remains it is clear that Eustreptospondylus was a bipedal, carnivorous, theropod dinosaur, related to the line that ultimately gave rise to Tyrannosaurus.
Only one fossilised specimen of Eustreptospondylus has been found in a quarry north of Oxford, England. The skeleton was found in marine clays so it was probably a carcass that had drifted out to sea.
The single skeleton is of an animal about 5 metres long. This is fairly small for a theropod. However vertebrae of this specimen looked as if they had not finished growing so this individual was probably not fully grown, and just how big this animal got is not certainly known.

Eoraptor lunensis

Eoraptor was one of the world's earliest dinosaurs. Some people think it may even just be an archosaur. It was a biped meat-eater that lived between 230 and 225 million years ago, in the northwestern region of Argentina. The type species is Eoraptor lunensis, which means "dawn plunderer [from the Valley] of the Moon", denoting where it was originally discovered (Greek eos/ηως meaning "dawn/morning" and Latin lunensis meaning "of the moon"). Paleontologists believe the Eoraptor resembles the common ancestor of all dinosaurs. It is known from several well-preserved skeletons.

Late Cretaceous, 85-65 million years ago, Elasmosaurus

A bizarre creature whose 15m long body was dwarfed by its long, thin neck and tail, Elasmosaurus swam using four flippers.
It was a carnivorous hunter which used its long neck to get close to prey without them noticing. A swift flick of the neck could catch them unawares. Its small head limited the size of what it could eat.

Elasmosaurus spent all its time in the water, often cruising coastal waters for shoals of fish. It would occasionally dive down to the seabed in shallow areas to find rounded pebbles. In its stomach, these aided digestion and provided ballast.
Elasmosaurus travelled long distances to find mating and breeding grounds. There is evidence it may have given birth to live young which it reared until they were old enough to look after themselves.

Dryosaurus - Late Jurassic

Dryosaurus was a medium-sized herbivorous biped, related to Leaellynasaura and Othnielia. Many well-preserved specimens are known and it was obviously a very successful dinosaur as remains have been found from the modern USA to Tanzania. It may even have been migratory. Dryosaurus used its horny beak to crop low-growing vegetation and its stiff tail acted as a counterbalance when running.

Diplodocus

Jurassic cow!

The Mummy Returns

Extremely dry conditions may bring surprises!

The Dinosauricon

Mike Keesey created an awesome website! visit it!

I love his banner!

Dinostamps!

I love stamps and I love dinosaurs!