Agathaumas

       Today, most argue that Agathaumas is simply a mislabeled Triceratops.

     Agathaumas is now displayed at the Field Museum in Chicago. It was given its name, which refers to its huge size, by paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope in 1872. It is a nomen dubium, however, and some debate exists to what Agathaumas is. Cope himself originally supposed it to be a type of hadrosaur until O. Marsh described Triceratops in 1889.

      Artist Charles R. Knight painted the dinosaur for Cope, creating a fantastic-looking beast, which blended the lengthy facial horns of Triceratops with the spiked frill of the Styracosaurus Dinosaur.

       The artwork was exposed years later by stop-motion animator Willis O'Brien, who used the Agathaumas in the 1925 film The Lost World. The Agathaumas has appeared in a variety of forms since then, and if those who doubt its existence are correct, it is one of the more successful imaginary dinosaurs.
 
Agathaumas facts:

Name:              Agathaumas Dinosaur ("great wonder")
Size:                 Huge
Main Facts:     Agathaumas is non-diagnostic relative to Chasmosaurus, a plant eating dinosaurs from the
                          late Cretaceous period

Diplodocus

        Diplodocus (Greek: "double-beam") is a kind of dinosaur of subgroup Sauropoda. Diplodocus lived during the Jurassic period. Scientists gave the dinosaur its name due to the way part of its skeleton was shaped.

        The first Diplodocus skeleton was establish at Como Bluff, Wyoming in 1878 and was named Diplodocus longus ("long double-beam") by paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. Other types include D. carnegiei (named after Andrew Carnegie) and D. hayi.

      Diplodocus remains have been established in the Western United States of Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming. Fossils of this animal are common, except for the skull, which is often missing from or else complete skeletons.

   
      The skull was very small compared to the huge size of the animal, which could reach up to 27 m. Instead of the way Diplodocidae were previously portrayed, with their necks high up in the air, it is now believed by some that the animal might only keep its head very low to the ground (for grazing), and that the very long tail served as a offset for the long neck. Others think the animal could stand on its hind legs.
Diplodocus is a 25 meter long, 25 tonne sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic time period (155 - 145 MYA) that lived on the territory of the modern US.

      Diplodocus was one of the longest animals ever to live. Seismosaurus, a species of Diplodocus, was 33.7-53.9 meters long and 34 tonnes in weight. In fact, it was so large that even a pack of Allosaurus wasn't able to hunt fully grown specimens (though Allosaurus can attack individuals which are weak, sick, old, injured and young). They lived in huge herds, sometimes up to 100 Diplodocus, led by a matriarch, like elephants.

      Diplodocus may had a long lifespan sometimes up to 120 years (it could be shorter lifespan if it is a warm-blooded animal like most dinosaurs).

     Diplodocus hatchlings ate 2-3 kilograms(4-6 pounds) per day, until they reached young adulthood.
Diplodocus probably lives in a symbiotic relationship with a small pterosaur called Anurognathus who cleans ticks and other parasites that live on skin of Diplodocus.
It should be noted that while it doesn't appear in
Juvenile Diplodocus from Walking with Dinosaurs
AustralopithecusmanAdded by Australopithecusman
      Prehistoric Park, a stylized drawing of this animal is on logo of Prehistoric Park. However, this sauropod dinosaur was featured only in the second episode of Walking with Dinosaurs and in Walking with Dinosaurs Allosaurus, a Walking with Dinosaurs special. It was also featured in cameos in the beginning of Walking with Beasts and the

Alamosaurus

       Alamosaurus Dinosaurs, (meaning "alamo lizard"), was a quadruped herbivore, and was named after Fort Alamo, Texas. Alamosaurus, measured to be one of the last of the sauropods, lived 80 million years ago through the late Cretaceous period.

      Gilmore named it in 1922 after partial skeletons were established and it was the first sauropod of the family Titanosaurus Dinosaurs that were found in North America.

      Alamosaurus Dinosaurs fossils were further have been improved from Montana, New Mexico, Texas and Utah. Till today no complete skulls have been found. The animal had a long neck, and a whip-like tail, probably used to protect itself against predators. Although little evidence has been found, some scientists say Alamosaurus may have had body Armour, like other sauropods at the time.

       It is estimated that Alamosaurus dinosaurs was over 69 feet long, and it was first discovered in 1922 by Charles Gilmore. The most recent major Alamosaurus discovery consists of two huge bones, a shoulder bone and a humerus was found at Big Bend National Park, in the 1970's.

      Alamosaurus was a large quadrupedal herbivore, measuring in at 100 ft (30.5 m) in length and probably weighing over 50 tons (45,360 kg).  It was a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur and like other sauropods, had a long neck and a long tail, which may have ended in a 'whiplash' structure.  No skull material is known, except for a few slender teeth.  The Teas specimens are from are from the Javelina Formation where possibly three individuals, one adult and two juveniles, (half the adult size) were found.  The Alamosaurus is believed to be a re-entrant" into North America from South America.

Alamosaurus facts:

Name:              Alamosaurus Dinosaurs ("alamo lizard")
Size:                  33 tons and 69 feet in length
Main Facts:     Much larger than other members of the Titanosauridae which weighed approximately 33 tons.

Apatosaurus

         
       Apatosaurus, formerly known as Brontosaurus (erroneously named Brontosaurus by Othniel Charles Marsh after he incorrectly placed the head of a Camarasaurus on the body of an Apatosaurus), is a genus of sauropod dinosaurs that lived about 140 million years ago, during the Jurassic period. They were some of the major land animals that ever existed, about 4.5 meters (15 feet) tall at the hips, with a length of up to 25m (80 feet) and a mass up to 35 metric tones (40 tons). However, the Argentinosaurus was even larger.

     The cervical vertebra and the bones in the legs were larger and heavier than that of Diplodocus, but they both had the long neck and tail. Apatosaurus skeleton which was found at the American Museum of Natural History. The skull was first recognized in 1975, a century after it got its name. The Apatosaurus had a claw on its hand, but only the thumb. Scientists have a theory about the tail being lifted perhaps a meter above the ground. It would prevent the dinosaur from stomping on it, and put the tail out of arrive at of predators.
Early on, it was believed that Apatosaurus Dinosaurs was too massive to support its own weight on dry land, so it was theorized that the sauropod must have lived partly submerged in water, perhaps in a swamp. Recent conclusion does not support this. Fossilized footprints indicate that it probably lived in herds. To aid in dispensation food, Apatosaurus may have swallowed gizzard stones (gastroliths) the same way many birds do today — its jaws alone were not sufficient to chew tough plant fibers.

        The Apatosaurs perhaps lumbered along in flocks on riverbanks with trees, eating off the top leaves. Scientists believe that these sauropods could not raise their neck to an angle of 90 degrees, as doing so would sluggish blood flow to the brain excessively; blood starting at the body proper would take two or more minutes to reach the brain. Furthermore, studies of the arrangement of the neck vertebrae have revealed that the neck was not as flexible as previously thought. No one knows how Apatosaurs ate enough food to gratify their enormous bodies. They probably ate constantly, pausing only to cool off, drink or to remove parasites. They must have slept standing upright. If attacked by a predator, it could preserve itself by swinging its tail from side to side, or stomp at the meat-eater. Because of the Apatosaurs’ slow velocity, they lived in herds, and they could "call" on each other, if one needed help.

    Classification and history of Apatosaurus Dinosaurs

     In 1877, Othniel Charles Marsh available notes on his discovery of the Apatosaurus, and then in 1879 described one more, more complete dinosaur — the Brontosaurus. In 1903, it was discovered that the apatosaur was in fact a juvenile brontosaur, and the name Apatosaurus, having been published first, was deemed to have priority as the bureaucrat name; Brontosaurus was relegated to being a synonym. The name was not formally removed from the records of paleontology until 1974.

    Fossils of this animal have been establish in Nine Mile Quarry and Bone Cabin Quarry in Wyoming, and at sites in Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah, USA.

Species

    A. Ajax is the type species of the genera, and was named by the paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in 1877 after Ajax, the hero from Greek mythology. It is the holotype for the genera, and two partial skeletons have been found including part of a skull.

    A. Excelsus (originally Brontosaurus) was named by Marsh in 1879. It is known from six partial skeletons, including part of a skull, which have been establish in the United States, in Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming.
A. louisae was named by William Holland, in 1915. It is known from one incomplete skeleton, which was found in Colorado, in the United States.

    Robert T. Bakker made A. yahnahpin the type species of a new genus, Eobrontosaurus in 1998, so it is now correctly Eobrontosaurus yahnahpin. Filla, James and Redman named it in 1994. One partial skeleton   has been found in Wyoming

Apatosaurus facts:

Name:               Apatosaurus (erroneously named Brontosaurus by Othniel Charles Marsh)
Size:                  80ft long and 15ft tall
Main Facts:     Apatosaurus, a giant sauropod dinosaur, had a pointed claw on each front foot, which it   
                         may have used for defense.

Mamenchisaurus

       Mamenchisaurus (pronounced ma-MENCH-ih-SAW-rus) was first exposed in China by C. C. Young. It is a plant-eating four-legged dinosaur, known for its amazingly long neck.

     The first specimen exposed (the type specimen) was 22 meters (72 feet) long, and half of that was neck (11 meters, or 36 feet) - which made it the longest known neck any animal at the time. 19 vertebrae were exposed (another record), along with long rods that were found in the neck.
In 1987, a different species of Mamenchisaurus was exposed (M. hochuanensis) with a neck that might have reached up to 15 meters (49 feet) in length. In 1994, the Sauroposeidon was exposed in the United States, with a neck estimated to be up to 12 meters (39 feet) long; although since the Sauroposeidon is a brachiosaurid, with very long forelimbs, it is a much taller dinosaur.

      Mamenchisaurus means "Mamenchi lizard", from the Chinese ma ("horse"), men ("gate") and chi ("stream"), and the Greek sauros ("lizard"). It was named for the Mamingxi Ferry in Jinshajiang, on the Yangtze River, Yibin, in the Sichuan Province of China, where it was establish.

     Most genuses lived 145 to 150 million years ago, in the Tithonian age of the late Jurassic time.

    A herd of mamenchisaurs were featured in the summary scene in Jurassic Park's sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Saltasaurus

  
      Saltasaurus was a small sauropod of the late Cretaceous, characterized by a diplodocid-type head (with blunt teeth only in the back of the mouth) and was the first exposed with small bony plates entrenched in its skin. The bony plates (osteoderms) have since been found in other titanosaurids, and a crest of scutes has also been discovered running down the back of diplodocids. When the plates of a saltosaur were at first found independently of skeletal remains, they were unspecified to be from an ankylosaurian, whose plates they resemble.
Changing perceptions

      In the Cretaceous period, sauropod dinosaurs in North America were behind the survival game to duck-billed dinosaurs, such as Edmontosaurus. However, like modern Australia, South America was an island continent and life evolved rather in a different way there. Specifically, the duck-billed dinosaurs never gained a foothold and so sauropods, purposely the titanosaurids, sustained on their own path of evolution.

     Saltasaurus (which means "lizard from Salta") was one such highly-evolved sauropod, and lived 70 to 65 million years past. When it was first discovered in 1980, it enforced palaeontologists to reconsider many of their assumptions about what was and what was not a sauropod because Saltasaurus, though clearly a sauropod, had armour plating. Previously, it had been assumed that size alone was sufficient defense for the massive sauropods.

     However, a Saltasaurus was exposed with covered with bony knobs 10 to 12 centimeters (4 to 5 inches) in diameter. Since then, palaeontologists have investigated the option that other sauropods also had armour; for example, the Argentinian Laplatasaurus.

Brachiosaurus

  
      For many decades, Brachiosaurus (brack-ee-oh-SORE-us) was the biggest dinosaurs known. It has since been exceeded in sheer mass by a number of giant titanosaurids like the Argentinosaurus and it was lastly surpassed in height by another brachiosaurid, the Sauroposeidon. It was, however, still the largest dinosaur known from a fairly complete skeleton.
However, even that may no longer be true, since the biggest known specimens are nowconsidered to be part of the new Giraffatitan genus. This new species includes the well-known mounted Brachiosaurus in the Humboldt Museum of Berlin, which is the tallest mounted skeleton in the world.

    Brachiosaurus is unsurprising to weigh from 30 to 80 tones (35 to 90 tons), to reach 13 meters (42 feet) in height, and 25 meters (82 feet) in length. Higher estimates are usually based on the Ultrasauros, which was originally measured to be an extremely large Brachiosaurus.

    However, Ultrasauros is now believed to be a chimera, calm of neck bones from a Supersaurus, and a shoulder bone (scapulacoracoid) from a Brachiosaurus smaller than the largest Giraffatitan specimens.

•  Description and environment

     Brachiosaurus had teeth like chisels (spatulate), and nostrils on the top of its head, which may indicate it, had a good sense of smell. It had a number of holes in its skull to decrease weight. The first toe on its front foot, and the first three on its hind feet had claws. They may have traveled in herds.

It used to be theorized that it used the nostrils on the top of its head like a snorkel, and spent most of its time flooded in water to help support its great mass. However, it is now believed that it was a fully earthly animal. Studies have shown that the water pressure would be too great for it to breathe while flooded, and its feet are too narrow, and would sink into the mud.

Like all of the other "long-necked" dinosaurs, the Brachiosaurus’ neck was serious and when it held it in a upright position for too long time, it would not get any blood to the brain. It might have stood at the border of the forests and waved the head up and down, while it systematically detached all the eatable food on the trees.

     If the Brachiosaurus was warm-blooded, it is predictable that it would take ten years to reach full size. If it were cold-blooded, then it would take over 100 years to do so. If it were warm-blooded, it would have to eat more than 400 lbs. (200 kg) a day, but a lot less if it were not.

•  Berlin's brancai and Chicago's high flyer

     The mounted skeleton of a B. brancai (or Giraffatitan) in the Humboldt Museum in Berlin is 4 stories tall, attainment 12 meters (39 feet) into the air, and is 23 meters (74 feet) long. It is the tallest mounted skeleton in the world, although the bones come from several different specimens.

     A Brachiosaurus is also mounted in the B Concourse of United Airlines' Terminal One in O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, politeness of the Field Museum of Chicago. It is a model, not a collection of fossils.
Classification

Camarasaurus

    
     The Camarasaurus (pronounced KAM-a-ra-SORE-us) was a genus of quadrupedal, herbivorous dinosaurs found in Royal Tyrrell Museum. They are the most normal of the giant sauropods to be establish in North America, but only average in size, about 18 meters (60 feet) in length as adults, and weighing up to 28 tonnes (31 tons). It lived in the late Jurassic period, between 155 and 145 million years ago.

•         Anatomy

    The main feature of attention is its skull. The skull was remarkably square and the blunt snout had many holes, though it was sturdy and often recovered in good condition.

    The 19 cm-long (7.5 inch) teeth were shaped like chisels (spatulate) and set consistently along the jaw. The power of the teeth indicates that Camarasaurus almost certainly ate coarser plant material than the fragile-toothed diplodocids.
Like a chicken, it would almost certainly have swallowed stones (gastroliths) to help physically digest the food in the stomach, and then regurgitated or passed them when they became too smooth. Consistent with this suggestion, the rock formation in which they are often found (the Morrison Formation) includes a large number of isolated piles of strangely smooth stones.

    Each giant foot bore five toes, with the internal toe having a large sharpened claw for self-defense. Like most sauropods, the front legs were shorter than the hind legs, but the high position of the shoulders destined there was little slope in the back. In some sauropods there were long upward projections on each vertebra, but the nonattendance of such structures from the spine of Camarasaurus suggests that it was not able to raise itself up on its hind legs.

    The vertebrae were nevertheless specialized; as a weight-saving device seen in many later sauropods, the vertebrae were hollowed out, hence the name "chambered lizard". Like a new elephant, Camarasaurus appears to have a wedge of spongy tissue at the base of the heel, to support the weight of such a large creature. The neck, and counter-balancing tail, was shorter than usual for a sauropod of this size.

   Camarasaurus, again like certain other sauropods, had an amplification of the spinal cord near the hips. Paleontologists originally believed this to be a second brain, perhaps essential to co-ordinate such a huge creature. Modern opinion asserts that while it was an area of large anxious activity, it was not a brain. However, this enlargement was actually larger than the extraordinarily small brain contained in the animals' box-like skull.

    It is optional by some paleontologists that Camarasaurus may have lived for up to a hundred years.

• Behavior

    There is a fossil evidence of adults and young that died together. This suggests that Camarasaurus traveled in herds. Also, recovered camarasaur eggs are establish in lines, not in neatly approved nests as with some other dinosaurs. Like most sauropods, it seems Camarasaurus did not care for its young.

• Discovery

     The first record of Camarasaurus ("chambered lizard") comes from 1877, when a few scattered vertebrae where situated in Colorado by Oramel W. Lucas. The paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope paid for the bones as element of his long-running and acrimonious competition with Othniel Charles Marsh (known as the Bone Wars), and named them in the same year.

    It was not until 1925 that a whole skeleton of Camarasaurus was recovered, by Charles W. Gilmore. However, it was the skeleton from a young Camarasaurus so many illustrations of the dinosaur from the time show it to be much lesser than it is now known to be.

    The Morrison Formation along the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains is home to a rich widen of late Jurassic rock. A large number of dinosaur species can be establish here, including relatives of the Camarasaurus such as Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus. However camarasaurs are the most plentiful of all the dinosaurs in the Formation, and there have been a number of complete skeletons improved from Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

• Classification

     The scientific arrangement of the Camarasaurus using the Linnaean system is given in the box to the upper right, but amongst paleontologists this method of categorizing dinosaurs has been mainly supplanted by cladistics. A simplified version of one probable branching evolutionary tree (cladogram), showing the relationship between Camarasaurus and the other major groups of sauropods follows:

Saurischia ("lizard hipped" dinosaurs)
Sauropoda ("lizard feet")
Macronaria ("large nostrils") motha fucka
Camarasauridae
Titanosauriformes
Brachiosauridae (like the Brachiosaurus and Sauroposeidon)
Titanosauridae (like the Argentinosaurus)
Diplodocidomorpha (like the Apatosaurus and Diplodocus)
Camarasaurus is considered to be a basal macronarian, or more personally related to the common ancestor of all macronarians than more evolved forms like Brachiosaurus.

    Cope's unique Camarasaurus was the species C. supremus ("the biggest chambered lizard") in 1877. Other species since discovered include C. grandis ("grand chambered lizard") later in 1877, C. lentus in 1889, and C. lewisi (originally Cathetosaurus) in 1988.

•  Camarasaurus facts:

Name:     Camarasaurus (chambered lizard)
Size:     60ft long and 18ft tall
Main Facts:     The huge nostrils of Camarasaurus located in front of the eyes, almost certainly contained a large area of moist membrane to cool the brain in the hot weather of the Jurassic.

Barapasaurus

      Barapasaurus is inquisitive for the reason that it is the most primitive known sauropod, dating from near the beginning of the Jurassic Period - more specifically the Toarcian age, about 189.6 to 176.5 million years ago. This is apparent in the unspecialized character of its form. Later sauropods like Brachiosaurus urbanized their own feeding strategies. Conversely, Barapasaurus was a bit of an "all-purpose" dinosaur.
Like all sauropods, Barapasaurus was an herbivore. However, no cranium has yet been hauled and so its precise diet has not been dogged. A few isolated teeth are identified but not adequate to formulate judgments on the nature of its diet. Barapasaurus is also significant for the reason that, although its vestiges were found in India, it is extremely analogous to further samples spotted in East Africa. From this we can wrap up that all through the early Jurassic period, these 2 land masses were still associated or at smallest amount only freshly separated.

     Barapasaurus is incorporated in Vulcanodontidae rather than Cetiosauridae, other ancestors in Sauropods. This categorization is unverified since inadequate work has been completed on the skeletons. The explanation is vindicated by the slender sacrum (a boxlike arrangement of the hip), which is a attribute of vulcanodontids. The 1st bones of Barapasaurus were spotted in India in 1960. However, it was not until 1975 that this recuperation was made the category specimen, and the authorized portrayal published by Jain, Kutty, Roy-Chowdhury and Chatterjee of Calcutta.

     Barapasaurus was displayed at the Natural History Museum. Since then, 5 additional skeletons have been hauled from the Godavari Valley in southern regions of India. However, none of these incorporated the cranium or feet. The remnants of the framework are known, so it is hypothetically the best-known of the near the beginning Jurassic sauropods. Regrettably, little work has yet been available on the subject of these discoveries. Fascinatingly, Barapasaurus is one of the hardly any dinosaurs to be exposed in modern-day India. About half a dozen remnant specimens have been unearthed, but till date, no one has initiated this sauropods skull (though speckled tooth remnants have been acknowledged, which helps specialists rebuild the possible shape of its head).

•  Barapasaurus facts:

Name:     Barapasaurus (large legged lizard)
Size:     54feet long and 18ft tall
Main Facts:     Barapasaurus was an herbivore and its fossils dating from the Jurassic Period.

Argentinosaurus

     
      Argentinosaurus was an herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that is fairly possibly the largest, heaviest land animal that ever lived. It urbanized on the island continent of South America during the Cretaceous period, after all of its more familiar Gondwanan Jurassic kin — like Apatosaurus.
Not much of Argentinosaurus Dinosaurs has been improved: just some back vertebrae, tibia, fragmentary ribs, and sacrum. However, the spectacular proportions of these bones and the knowledge of the species' Sauropod relatives allow paleontologists to estimate that full-grown specimens reached some 35 to 45 meters (115 to 150 feet). Weight was perhaps 80 to 100 tones (90 to 110 tons). Vast wings on the vertebrae suited the attachment of massive muscles.

    Classification and history of Argentinosaurus Dinosaurs

    Argentinosaurus Dinosaurs ("silver lizard") is a new discovery. The type species, A. huinculensis, was only described and published (by the Argentinean paleontologists Jose F. Bonaparte and Rodolfo Coria) in 1993. Argentinosaurus are displayed at Atlanta's Fernbank Museum of Natural History. Its more exact time-frame within the Cretaceous is the Albian to Cenomanian epochs, 112.2 to 93.5 mya.
The fossil finding site is in the Rio Limay Formation in Neuquen Province, Argentina. Due to the huge size of each bone, Rodolfo Coria apparently stated "God forbid we ever find a whole one" to National Geographic Magazine, who were covering the event.

•  Argentinosaurus facts:

Name:     Argentinosaurus Dinosaurs("silver lizard")
Size:     120 feet long and 70ft tall
Main Facts:     Argentinosaurus was a plant eating dinosaur and the heaviest land animal that ever lived.

Antarctosaurus

    
    Antarctosaurus Dinosaur (southern lizard) was an herbivorous titanosaur, which existed, in the late Cretaceous, around 75million year ago. This quadruped would have reached a length of around 18m, a height of 6m, and a weight of 40 to 70 tons, making it one of the largest South American sauropods and amongst the largest dinosaurs ever - it is related to the similarly gigantic Argentinosaurus.
Antarctosaurus is found in natural history museum and named by the paleontologist von Huene.The first fossils were established in 1916, and others have since been found in India, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Africa, and it is probable that it really did live in Antarctica. Parts recovered include two femora, two incomplete pelvises and numerous other fragments. One of the femora was 2.20m in length, and it is primarily from this that the astonishing size of the dinosaur is extrapolated. The post crania, however, suggest that its head was barely 60cm long.

    The taxonomic classification of Antarctosaurus Dinosaurs is, like that of a lot of dinosaurs, highly disputed. The type specimen may in fact be a small Antarctosaurus, as another specimen has recently been recovered that its double the size of the type specimen.

   Originally this dinosaur was located in a separate species, but they are now both thought to be A. wichmannianus. There are other problems with the type specimen, counting that its lower jaw is now thought to belong to a rebbachisaurid. Whether Antarctosaurus is even a titanosaur at all is now uncertain; it was located into Diplodocidae in 1993, but returned to Titanosauridae in 1997. Also, Jainosaurus was originally consideration to be a species of Antarctosaurus, A. septentrionalis, but it is now recognized as a distinct genus.

•  Antarctosaurus facts:

Name:     Antarctosaurus Dinosaur (southern lizard)
Size:     18m long and 6m tall
Main Facts:     Antarctosaurus was a huge quadrupedal herbivore with long neck and its tail lengths are highly variable among sauropods.

Amphicoelias

    Amphicoelias fragillimus (pronounced AM-fi-koil-i-as fra-GIL-i-mus, and meaning "very fragile double cavities") may be the major dinosaur ever discovered. If it truly existed, it would be the longest vertebrate by a substantial margin, and it would have a mass that rivals the heaviest animal known, the blue whale. However, because the only fossil evidence for its existence is lost, proof survives only in drawings, and doubt has been expressed about their veracity.



   The Bone Wars

   The validity of the discover is complicated by its discovery in the midst of the Bone Wars, an infamous period in the history of paleontology, when the two pre-eminent paleontologists of the time, Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, were rival to see who could find the most, and most sensational, new species. This competition was marred by bribery, accusations of robbery, spying, politics, and strong personal attacks. Amphicoelias is since found in New Mexico Museum of Natural History.

   Marsh was charming the bone war. He discovered a total of 86 new species during their decades-long rivalry, due in part to his detection of the Como Bluff site, near Medicine Bow, Wyoming, one of the richest sources of fossils ever uncovered. Cope only discovered 56; many of the fossils he unearthed were of species that had already been named, or were of unsure origin, so he was not credited with their discovery. As a result, Marsh's name is attached to many of the most famous dinosaurs, such as Triceratops, Allosaurus,Diplodocus, and Stegosaurus, while even Cope's most well-known discoveries, such as Dimetrodon (not actually a dinosaur), Camarasaurus, Coelophysis, and Monoclonius are more difficult to understand. So while there is no evidence of fabrication, the circumstances surrounding Amphicoelias do raise some doubt about the authenticity of the find.
The crumbling giant

Aegyptosaurus

    Aegyptosaurus Dinosaur ("Egyptian Lizard") is a variety of dinosaur believed to have lived in Africa around 95 million years ago, during the mid- and late-Cretaceous period.

    Aegyptosaurus is found in Natural History Museum, London which was named by paleontologist Stromer in 1932.
   
    This quadrupedal sauropod was an herbivore and its fossils have been originated in Egypt, Niger and in several different locations in the Sahara Desert. All known examples were discovered before 1939. The fossils were stored jointly in Munich, but were obliterated when a bombing raid destroyed the museum where they were kept in 1944, during World War II.

    Aegyptosaurus Dinosaur weighed roughly 10.5 tones (11.5 tons), was 50 feet long, and was over 16 feet tall. It had a neck of over average length and a small skull. The animal's long tail probably acted as a counterweight to its body mass.
    Aegyptosaurus Dinosaur was a close absolute of Argentinosaurus, a larger dinosaur found in South America. It compulsory that it may have evolved from its South American relative after crossing the ancient land bridge between Africa and South America.

•  Aegyptosaurus facts:

Name:     Aegyptosaurus Dinosaur ("Egyptian Lizard")
Size:     50 feet long and 16 feet tall.
Main Facts:     It's weighed roughly 10.5 tones and its long tail acted as a counterweight to its body mass.

Ammosaurus

    Ammosaurus Dinosaur ("lizard of the sand") has been recognized by four incomplete skeletons found in United States and Canada regions. The first Ammosaurus skeleton was established in the late 1880s by a group of construction workers in the Connecticut Valley in the US, who were constructing, a bridge at the time. The valley was once a swamp, on which Ammosaurus would often search for food along its banks. Other fragmental skeletons have been found in Arizona and Nova Scotia.

    Ammosaurus is found in the Natural History Museum. Othniel C. Marsh first recognized Ammosaurus's remains, he confused them with those of another dinosaur, Anchisaurus. It was not until 1891 that he renamed the fossils as that of Ammosaurus. Ironically, some of the Anchisaurus leftovers were thought to be remains of prehistoric humans. Although no Ammosaurus skull has ever been found, enough fossils was found to decide that it was more closely related to Plateosaurus than Anchisaurus as previously thought.

    Ammosaurus Dinosaur lived during the early Jurassic period, around 180 million years ago. It was a herbivore and could walk on both four or two feet, the latter undoubtably allowing it to reach higher branches. It had large claws on its hands to allow it to strip bark from trees and saplings. Compared to the relax of its body, Ammosaurus had both a long tail & neck, suggesting that it would have walked on four legs for most of its life, only on foot on two to defend itself or reach food. To defend itself, it would stand on its hind legs, slashing at its assailant with its large thumb claws on its fore legs.

    Ammosaurus Dinosaur measured over< 4.3 m (14 ft) long and stood about 1.8 m (6 ft) tall, though it would only be knee high if it was on all fours. At its largest, it would grow to the size of a small car.

•  Ammosaurus facts:

Name:     Ammosaurus Dinosaur ("lizard of the sand")
Size:     14 feet long and 6 feet tall
Main Facts:     Ammosaurus was a herbivore and could walk on both four or two feet. Its weighed around 290 kg (639 lbs), mainly due to its large body.

Seismosaurus

    Seismosaurus, meaning "Earth-shaking lizard," is one of the huge sauropods of the late Jurassic period. It lived from the Kimmeridgian to the Tithonian age, around 154 to 144 million years past.

    From snout to tail, Seismosaurus was approximately 33 meters, or 110 feet long. Its length was lately reduced from 50 meters through a reanalysis of its known tail vertebrae. This length is still longer than the blue whale which is concerning 30 meters, or 100 feet long.

    Seismosaurus is an herbivorous dinosaur connected to the Diplodocus. It had nostrils on the top of its head, and its front legs were shorter than its hind legs.

    It is known from a partial skeleton exposed in New Mexico in 1979 consisting of vertebrae, pelvis, ribs, and gastroliths.

Barosaurus

        Barosaurus ("heavy lizard") was a giant, long-tailed, long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur directly related to the more familiar Diplodocus.
Characteristics of Barosaurus Dinosaur

     Barosaurus was a large but rather typical diplodocid that lived during the Late Jurassic period, around 150 million years ago. In fact, in many compliments Barosaurus was very similar to Diplodocus itself, but with slight differences: much longer backbones (vertebrae) a shorter tail, and a much longer neck. Although its neck bones (cervical vertebrae) numbered 15 in total, just as in Diplodocus, some of them were more than 1 m (39 in) long. The scoops and hollows in their arrangement mean that the neck as a whole was probably light.

     The American Museum of natural History in New York City shows the skeleton of a "mother" Barosaurus Dinosaur rearing on her hind legs to an enormous height to protect her offspring from a small Allosaurus. Her head would be level with the fifth story of a building.

     The Barosaurus Dinosaur has long neck was build to live in the high air, like a giraffe. In order to pump blood to the brain the heart must have biased about 3,200 lbs. (1.6 t). The bigger a heart is, the slower it beats. Therefore the blood would run back to the heart before it reached the brain. Because of that, there's another theory that the Barosaurus had 8 hearts: Two in the chest and three pairs in the neck, which all worked together. Another theory says that it had some artery-blockades, which reduced the blood to run back. The enormous neck had 16 vertebras; some of them were over 3 ft. (1 m) long, but hollow. If they had not been hollow, it would not have been able to lift its neck from the earth. It was so tall, that if it stood on its back legs, it could look over a five-storey building.

    Just like the Apatosaurus, it used its tail to protect itself. The Barosaurus Dinosaur had to stand up on its back legs to defend itself, while swinging its tail or stomping the attacking dinosaur.
Discovery of Barosaurus Dinosaur

    Barosaurus is one of the many sauropods exposed in North America during the "Wild West Dinosaur Hunts" (the "Bone Wars") of the late 19th century. Othniel Charles Marsh named it in 1890. The name is also applied to specimens once classified in the genus Tornieria.

     Starting in 1922, three fairly complete Barosaurus skeletons were dug out of Carnegie Quarry, Utah, by a team lead by Earl Douglas of the Carnegie Museum of normal History, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Earlier, he had excavated Apatosaurus from the same site, and had been involved in setting up the Dinosaur National Monument there in 1915.

    More Barosaurus Dinosaur remains were exposed in South Dakota and, more recently, pieces of skull, limbs and other fragments of a sample from Tanzania in East Africa have also been assigned to Barosaurus.

•  Barosaurus facts:

Name:     Barosaurus (heavy lizard)
Size:     75feet long and 20ft tall
Main Facts:     Barasaurus was probably more than four-fifths of this plant-eater's total length of perhaps 27 m (90 ft). Most probably it had a small head, although no specimen of its skull has been recovered.

Anchisaurus

    Anchisaurus is a genus of dinosaurs Discovery of Anchisaurus Dinosaur.

The first discovery of Anchisaurus Dinosaur ("near lizard") leftovers was made before anything was known about the dinosaurs, and it was almost certainly the first dinosaur discovery in North America. When, in 1818, some large bones were discovered in Connecticut, USA, it was unspecified that they were of human origin. Gradually, as a result of further finds in Massachusetts, the number of these bones began to accumulate and by 1855 they were at least recognized as reptilian. Hitchcock collected these bones under the name "Megadactylus" in 1865. The great paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh named Anchisaurus in 1885, and Megadactylus become part of the genus Anchisaurus. The complete skeleton Anchisaurus is displayed in Yale Peabody Museum. More bones belonging to the genus were found in South Africa, suggesting that those two landmasses were at the time joined in one super-continent (Pangaea). A revival from Nova Scotia may also be Anchisaurus but this is unconfirmed.

Today, parts of Anchisaurus Dinosaur skeleton are still missing. Reconstructions typically assume that the tail and neck are like that of other dinosaurs of the same family, prosauropods. Anchisaurus was quite characteristic of this group and so this assumption is probably justified.

Description Of Anchisaurus Dinosaur

All species lived through the late Jurassic era; more specifically, the Pliensbachian to Toarcian periods, 200 to 188 million years ago. Digesting plant matter is a much more concentrated
biochemical process than digesting meat, and so herbivorous dinosaurs needed a huge gut. Since this had to be positioned in front of the pelvis, complementary on two legs became increasingly tricky, and they gradually evolved into the quadripedal position that characterizes the later sauropods such as Diplodocus. Prosauropods, then, represented a center phase between the earliest bipedal herbivores, and the later giant sauropods. Anchisaurus was characteristic of this group that flourished briefly during the late Triassic and Jurassic. It would have spent most of its time on four legs, but could have risen up on its hind legs to reach higher plants.

Thecodontosaurus

     Thecodontosaurus antiquus ("Ancient Socket Tooth Lizard") was an herbivorous dinosaur which lived throughout the Late Triassic period (Norian and/or Rhaetian age). Its remains are known typically from Triassic "fissure fillings" in South England and Wales. On standard, it was 4 feet (1.25 meters) long, 1 foot tall (0.3 meters), and weighed 25 pounds (11 kilograms).
Although not actually the first member of the group (that honour belongs to as yet unnamed sauropodomorphs from Madagascar (Flynn and Wyss 2002)), Thecodontosaurus is the most prehistoric well-known representative of the sauropodomorph dinosaurs. At first it was included under the prosauropoda (Upchurch 1998) but more recently it has been optional that Thecodontosaurus and its relatives were prior to the Prosauropod-Sauropod split (Yates & Kitching 2003). New reconstructions demonstrate that its neck is proportionally shorter than in higher early sauropodomorphs.

     The Thecodontosaurus was an injured party of World War 2 bombings by the Germans. The remains of this dinosaur and other fabric related to it were shattered in 1940. However, more remains have been found at a number of localities, counting Bristol. Some of this new material pertains to a young specimen that may belong to a separate species, Thecodontosaurus caducus Yates, and 2003

Unaysaurus

         Unaysaurus tolentinoi is one of the oldest dinosaurs each known. It was discovered in southern Brazil in 1998, and announced in a press meeting on Thursday, December 3, 2004. A member of a collection of plant-eating dinosaurs known as "prosauropods", it is closely connected to a dinosaur found in Germany, which indicates that it was relatively easy for species to spread across the giant landmass of the time, the super continent of Pangaea.

Like most early dinosaurs, Unaysaurus was comparatively small, and walked on two legs. It was only 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long, 70 to 80 centimeters tall, and weighed about 70 kilograms (155 pounds).

The fossils of Unaysaurus are well potted. They consist of an almost complete skull, complete with a inferior jaw, and partial skeleton with many of the bones still linked to each other in their natural positions. A model of Unaysaurus can be found at National Museum of Rio de Janeiro Federal University. It is one of the most total dinosaur skeletons, and the most complete skull, ever recovered in Brazil.
One big world

Unaysaurus lived about 200 to 225 million years past, in the Carnian to Norian ages of the late Triassic period. It was establish in the south of Brazil, which at the time was connected to northwest Africa. The entire world was united into the great super continent of Pangaea, which was just preliminary to divide into Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south.

Unaysaurus was establishing in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, near the city of Santa Maria. It was improved from the red beds of the Santa Maria Formation (also known as the Caturrita Formation), which is the geologic configuration where similarly old dinosaurs like Saturnalia have been establish. The oldest dinosaurs in the world are from here and close by in Argentina (like the Eoraptor), which suggests that the first dinosaurs may have originated in the area.

Segnosaurus

       Segnosaurus galbinensis is a theropod dinosaur belonging to the collection of the Therizinosauridae. The genus was described in 1979 by Dr. A. Perle. Three specimens (consisting of a mandible, pelvis, hindlimb, scapulocoracoid, unfinished forelimb, and vertebrae) were improved from the Baynshirenstaya Svita of the Mongolian People's Republic in sediments dated flanked by the Cenomanian to Turonian (Cretaceous).
Segnosaurus can be illustrious from other therizinosaurs on the basis of mesial mandibular teeth that are noticeably flattened and only slightly recurved and by the moderate density of the pedal unguals. The latero-dorsal shelf on the dentary starts at the fourteenth dentary tooth place and runs backwards for half the length of the lower jaw, unlike the shelf in Erlikosaurus which starts at the fifth tooth position. This would have indicated that Segnosaurus did not have as wide "cheeks" as Erlikosaurus would have had.

Sauropodomorphas

These are the quadrupedal herbivores like Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodocus.

The general caharacters of Sauropodomorphas are:

    Fast and agile
    Carnivorous diet
    Sharp, slicing teeth or beak, and well-developed jaw muscles
    Clawed hands (usually with three main digits - exceptions include the Tyrannosaurids, who lost the third digit)
    Bipedal walk
    Strong legs with bird-like, clawed feet
    Large eyes, indicating good eyesight.

The types of these dinosaurs includes the following:

Apatosaurus:

         Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus was one of the largest land animals that ever existed. The dinosaur Brontosaurus is now called Apatosaurus. This enormous plant-eater measured about 70-90 feet (21-27 m) long and about 15 feet (4.6 m) tall at the hips. It weighed roughly 33-38 tons (30-35 tones). Its head was less than 2 feet long; it had a long skull and a very tiny brain. This plant-eater had a long neck (with 15 vertebrae), a long whip-like tail (about 50 ft = 15 m long), a hollow backbone, peg-like teeth in the front of the jaws, and four massive, column-like legs. Its hind legs were larger than the front legs.Fossilized Apatosaurus footprints (called track ways) have been found (in Colorado, USA) that were about a yard wide. Apatosaurus could have held its head at most 17 feet (5.4 m) off the ground (Parrish and Stevens, 1999).
Allosaurus, which was the biggest meat-eater at that time in North America, was only 15 feet (4.6 m) tall. This afforded Apatosaurus protection from predators, since Allosaurus couldn't attach its head or neck, and probably had more sense than to attack its gigantic, clawed feet or whip-like tail.Strangely, Apatosaurus' nostrils were located on the top of its head. No one is sure what purpose this served. It used to be thought that this was a snorkel-like device for a water-dwelling animal, but this theory has been repudiated. Since Apatosaurus fossils have been found far from any water-dwelling fossils, it is now believed that Apatosaurus spent most of its time on land, far from large bodies of water or swamps.

Ornithopods

Ornithopods are a suborder of ornithischian dinosaurs that had a beak, a two-legged walk or a two-legged and four-legged walk, and no body armor. These plant-eating dinosaurs lived from the late Triassic period until the Cretaceous period.

Ornithopods had no hole in the outer, lower jaw. Ornithopods included:

• Heterodontosaurids - small, early dinosaurs with three kinds of teeth
• Hypsilophodontids - small, fast-running dinosaurs with self-sharpening teeth and a small beak
• Dryosaurids - small, fast-running dinosaurs with a long, stiff tail
• Thescelosaurids - late, fast-running dinosaurs
• Camptosaurids - beaked dinosaurs with hoof-like claws
• Iguanodontids - beaked dinosaurs with hoof-like claws and a spike on each thumb
• Hadrosaurids - large duck-billed dinosaurs with no head crest
• Lambeosaurids - large duck-billed dinosaurs with a head crest

Anatotitan:

Anatotitan was a large, duck-billed dinosaur about 33 feet (10 m) long and 8 feet (2.5 m) tall at the hips; it weighed roughly 5 tons (7300 kg) - about as big as a bus. It was very similar to Edmontosaurus, but it was more lightly built and had longer legs. Anatotitan had short arms, a long, pointy tail, three hoofed toes, mitten-like hands, a flat, sloping head with a wide, toothless beak, cheek pouches, and hundreds of closely-packed cheek teeth (for grinding plant material).Anatotitan was a biped (it walked on two legs) but it could also walk on four legs, perhaps to graze low-lying plants. Anatotitan was probably a relatively slow-moving dinosaur with few defenses, but may have had keen senses (eyesight, hearing, and smell) to help it avoid predators.

Anatotitan lived in the late Cretaceous period, about 70-65 million years ago, toward the end of the Mesozoic Era.T. rex and Dromaeosaurus were among its contemporaries, and they may have preyed upon Anatotitan.Anatotitan may have lived in herds, like many other hadrosaurs.Anatotitan was an herbivore, a plant eater. It probably ate conifer needles, twigs, seeds, and other plant material with its tough beak. It had no teeth in its beak, but had hundreds of cheek teeth used for grinding up the tough plant material that it ate. Anatotitan had three rows of replaceable teeth for a total of 720 teeth - it a tooth broke off, another replaced it.

Qantassaurus

    Qantassaurus intrepidus (KWAHN-tuh-SORE-us) is a quick two-legged, plant-eating dinosaur that lived in Australia about 115 million years past, when the continent was still south of the Antarctic Circle. It was the size of a little grey kangaroo, and had huge eyes to help it see in the polar night. It was exposed by Patricia Vickers-Rich and her husband Tom Rich near Inverloch in 1996, and named after QANTAS, the Australian airline.

Stub-nosed runner

"The jaw is sole because it is short and stocky, whereas other jaws in that dinosaur genus are long and slender"
— Patricia Vickers-Rich

   Qantassaurus was about 1.8 meters (6 feet) long, and concerning 1 meter (3 feet) high. It had short thighs and long shins, so it was almost certainly a fast runner. Its four-toed feet had claws for traction, and the long tail almost certainly helped with turning. One characteristic of the hypsilophodontids and their more primitive ancestors is a spur, or trochanter, on the upper outside of the thigh bone (or femur), where muscle was attached.

    It only had 12 teeth in its inferior jaw, while most hypsilophodontids had at least 14, so its face was probably short and stubby. It had a beak, with leaf-shaped teeth back in its cheek, which were hut as they wore down, and replaced by new teeth growing up from the jaw.
Big-eyed Gondwanan

   It lived 115 million years before in Australia, during the Albian age of the early Cretaceous time. At the time, Antarctica was part of the super continent of Gondwana, and within the Antarctic Circle. The standard temperature ranged from -6 to 3 °C (21 to 37 °F), and the polar night lasted up to 3 months.

   They had several adaptations to survive in these conditions. Bone enlargement shows that hypsilophodontids were active all year round, so they did not hibernate from side to side the winter. The structure of hypsilophodontid bones also suggests that it may have been warm-blooded, which would help uphold its body heat. A surprising number of Australian hypsilophodontid fossils demonstrate signs of disease, which may show that they were washed away by the spring, melt after failing to survive the winter.

   The brain of a related hypsilophodontid, Leaellynasaura, indicates it had large optic lobes, and large eyes, which may have helped it, see in the dark polar winter.

   Qantassaurus was almost certainly a browser, who grabbed ferns and other vegetation with its five-fingered hands, and ran absent from predators like a modern gazelle. It may have had some kind of defensive camouflage, like spots.

Classification

    Qantassaurus is a hypsilophodontid, at smallest amount in the loosest sense. Newer studies point to that the Hypsilophodontidae family is a paraphyletic group, so it will probably be broken up.

   It is one of four named genus of hypsilophodontid from southeast Australia, along with Leaellynasaura amicagraphica, Atlascopcosaurus loadsi, and Fulgurotherium australe. The four species are typically known from isolated bones and teeth; however the thigh bones of F. australe are very varied and may belong to three separate genera.

Tyrannosaurus rex(T rex)

 

                 Tyrannosaurus rex ("tyrant lizard king"), also recognized colloquially as The King of the Dinosaurs, was a huge carnivorous theropod dinosaur from the Upper Maastrichtian, the last stage of the Cretaceous time, 65–66 million years ago. Its fossil leftovers are rare — as of 2005 only 30 specimens had been found1, including three total skulls. The first specimens found played a significant role in the Bone Wars. T. rex is the best known carnivorous dinosaur, chiefly because it was consideration to be the largest to have ever existed for a long time. While there have been sensationalistic claims of new, larger theropods "dethroning" T. rex as the King of the Dinosaurs, proof remains scant and open to debate. T. rex will very likely remain a subject of ongoing scientific investigate and popular culture.

•  Discoveries

The first specimen (a partial vertebra) was establish by Edward Cope in 1892 and was described as Manospondylus gigas. It was assigned to Tyrannosaurus rex in 1912 by Henry Osborn. Barnum Brown, helper curator of the American Museum of Natural History, establishes the second T. Rex Skeleton in Wyoming in 1900. This specimen was at first named Dynamosaurus imperiosus in the same paper in which Tyrannosaurus rex was described. Were it not for page order, Dynamosaurus would have turn out to be the official name. The original "Dynamosaurus" material resides in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London.

• Characteristics

    Up to 13 meters (43 feet) in length and 4–7 tons in weight, T. rex was one of the main carnivorous dinosaurs of all time. Compared to additional carnivorous dinosaurs, the skull of Tyrannosaurus is a lot modified. Many of the bones are compound together, preventing group between them. The bones themselves are much more massive than is typical of a theropod, and the jagged teeth, far from being bladelike, are massive and oval in cross-section. Heavy wear and the bite script found on bones of other dinosaurs indicate that these teeth could bite into solid bone. The teeth are often damaged or broken at the tips from heavy use but, unlike mammals, were continually full-grown and shed all through the life of the animal. Compared to other giant carnivorous dinosaurs such as Allosaurus, Tyrannosaurus appears to have had a sizeable brain, but it was almost certainly not chiefly intelligent by mammalian standards.

    The neck was short and very a lot muscled. The arms of T. rex were small, maybe to make up for the weight of its huge head, but were very sturdy. Paleontologists continue to argue about what reason, if any, they served. They may have served to grab the female during sex, and surely helped the animal to get up, temporarily behind the front body like the struts of a detached truck trailer. The legs were comparatively long and slender for an animal of this size. Recent investigate suggests that an adult Tyrannosaurus could not run much, but juveniles might have been with no trouble as fast as a modern lion. Most scientists and paleontologists adults were not fast runners. The configuration of its hip bone relative to the legs and spine propose a muscle tissue expansion and posture that would have enabled the animal to run close to 30 mph (50 km/h) in adulthood. Evidence of its prey in fossils and migrating patterns propose this animal probably had to have been able to sustain a speed strong enough to hunt its prey. To recompense for its immense bulk, the center of many bones were hollowed out. This significantly reduced the weight of the skeleton while maintaining much of the power of the bones.

Nothronychus

     Nothronychus mckinleyi is a dinosaur classify in the group Therizinosauria, strange theropods with a toothless beak, a bird-like hip (like the non-related ornithischians), and four-toed feet, with all four toes facing onward. The type species of this dinosaur was found by James I. Kirkland and Douglas G. Wolfe in 2001 near New Mexico's border with Arizona, in an area recognized as the Zuni Basin.

    The name Nothronychus, meaning "sloth-like claw", was selected because the animal reminded Kirkland of a giant earth sloth. It is the first example of therizinosaurs to be established in the Americas. Previous discoveries had been from China and Mongolia. Nothronychus was better than Erlikosaurus or Segnosaurus, but in some ways more prehistoric than these Asian relatives. A related dinosaur from a considerably earlier period, Falcarius utahensis, was exposed in Utah in 2005.
The sloth-like Nothronychus lived 90 million years past, during the Mid Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era, in swampy forests alike to modern bayous in Louisiana. The era was a time of extreme global warming, with ocean levels 300 m (1,000 ft) higher than current levels and a significantly abridged amount of dry land. Almost no dinosaur fossils have been found from this time, chiefly in North America, making this and associated discoveries very important.

    Nothronychus is a associate of the theropod group of carnivorous dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus. But Nothronychus, and its close relations, evolved into plant-eaters. It was bipedal and walked more upright than its carnivore ancestors. The person weighed about a tonne, was 4.5-6 m (15-20 ft) long and stood 3-3.6 m (10-12 ft) tall.

Marginocephalians

Marginocephalians are a group of Ornithischian (bird-hipped) dinosaurs that have a distinctive skull structure (a slight shelf or bony frill on the back of the skull), a unique palate (part of the mouth) and a short pubis (part of the hip). These plant-eaters include the Ceratopsians (horned dinosaurs like Triceratops, Styracosaurus, Pentaceratops, Protoceratops, etc.) and the Pachycephalosaurians (thick-skulled dinosaurs like (Stegoceras, Pachycephalosaurus, etc.). Marginocephalians may have evolved from the closely-related Ornithopods.

     Protoceratops:


Protoceratops walked on four legs, had a large head, a bulky body, a parrot-like beak, cheek teeth, and a small frill on its head. Males may have had larger frills than females, indicating that the frill may have been used in courtship and mating.

Protoceratops was about 6 to 8.2 feet (1.5-2.5 m) and weighed roughly 900 pounds (400 kg). It was about 3 feet tall (to the top of the shoulders). Protoceratops lived in the late Cretaceous period, about 86 to 71 million years ago, toward the end of the Mesozoic, the Age of Reptiles. Protoceratops was possibly a herding animal, like several other ceratopsians. This hypothesis is supported by the decision of bone beds, large deposits of bones of the same species in an area, and large groups of nests. Each nest had 12 or more eggs, laid in a spiral fashion.Protoceratops was an herbivore, a plant eater. It probably ate cycads and other prehistoric plants with its tough, hook-like beak.Protoceratops walked on four short legs; it was a relatively slow dinosaur. Dinosaur speeds are estimated using their morphology (characteristics like leg length and estimated body mass) and fossilized track ways.

Styracosaurus:

Styracosaurus was a dinosaur that walked on four short legs. This large plant-eater had a six-spiked frill projecting from the back of its skull. It also had an upward-pointing horn on its nose (2 feet (60 cm) long and 6 inches (15 cm) wide), and two small horns above its eyes. These spikes and the horn probably provided protection from predators, and were possibly used in mating rituals and rivalry. It had a short, thick, pointed tail, a large, bulky body, a large skull and a beak. Styracosaurus hatched from eggs. Styracosaurus was about 18 feet (5 m) long, 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, and weighed up to 3 tons.

Styracosaurus lived in the late Cretaceous period, about 77-70 million years ago. It was among the last of the dinosaur species to evolve before the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction 65 million years ago. Among the contemporaries of Styracosaurus were Tyrannosaurus rex, Ankylosaurus (an armored herbivore), Corythosaurus (a crested dinosaur), and Dryptosaurus (a meat-eating dinosaur). Styracosaurus may have been a herding animal, like some other ceratopsians. This hypothesis is supported by the finding of bone beds, large deposits of bones of the same species in an area. Styracosaurus hatched from eggs, and the young may have been cared for by parents.When threatened by predators, Styracosaurus may have charged into its enemy like a modern-day rhinoceros does. This would have been a very effective defense.Styracosaurus probably ate cycads, palms, and other prehistoric plants with its tough beak. It could also chew well with its cheek teeth (like other ceratopsians, but unlike most other dinosaurs).

Liaoceratops

      Liaoceratops is a newly discovered dinosaur supposed to be an early cousin to the horned ceratopsians. It was exposed in China by a team of American and Chinese scientists. Liaoceratops was much smaller than its later cousins, but offers a sight into the early evolution of one of the most enigmatic groups of dinosaurs.
Liaoceratops is rather small, weighing a predictable seven pounds and possessing only incomplete traces of horns and a frill, structures that characterized later ceratopsians. However, these skin help understand a major split in the evolution of ceratopsians. Long before the familiar Triceratops evolved in North America, the ceratopsian lineage split into two lines: the neoceratopsians, the main lineage that includes the familiar horned and frilled forms, and the psittacosaurids, a radiation of smaller, parrot-beaked dinosaurs.

    "Liaoceratops gives us a great window on the early development of horned dinosaurs and tells us that Triceratops and its relatives evolved from very small Asian ceratopsians. This small, prehistoric dinosaur is actually more interesting to science in many ways than its larger, more well-known relatives because it teaches us more about evolution. Basal dinosaurs are critical because they help us to tie dissimilar groups of dinosaurs together and map out evolutionary patterns," said Peter Makovicky, Curator of Dinosaurs at the Field Museum in Chicago and a co-author of the paper telling the dinosaur.

    "Liaoceratops establishes that this split occurred no later than the first part of the Cretaceous Period. Also, it indicates that ceratopsians acquired some of their distinctive features previous and more rapidly than was previously recognized," Makovicky said.

Ironically, the very small Liaoceratops may also help scientists appreciate the roles of horns and frills in ceratopsian dinosaurs. First thought of as offensive or suspicious organs, these structures are seen by many paleontologists today as show devices used in species recognition and to attract mates. Liaoceratops has a small horn opposite sideways under each of its eyes. As this arrangement is quite small and light, Makovicky believes that it was a display organ and had no purpose in defense.

Liaoceratops was exposed in the famous Liaoning Province of China, where several fossils of feathered dinosaurs have also been composed. These beds have also yielded fossil insects, fossils of ginkgo trees, and many other dinosaurs, counting the early troodontid Sinovenator, also described by Makovicky earlier this year. In the future, Makovicky hopes to continue his field works in the Liaoning Province.

Leaellynasaura

    
      First discovered in Dinosaur Cove, Australia, Leaellynasaura was a dinosaur from the first Cretaceous. Strangely enough, at this stage in time, Victoria would have been well within the Antarctic Circle, which is now very cold. This means that Leaellynasaura was living and it seems that thriving much further south than any reptile could today. This is particularly relevant due to Cryolophosaurus being exposed in Antarctica. However, when Cryolophosaurus lived in Antarctica, it was much warmer (this was during the early Jurassic) and it was emotionally involved to the land mass of Pangaea, which caused very strong seasonal monsoon winds across the polar area. In addition, sea currents flowing across the polar area banned a cold pool of air or water from accumulating. However the sun would not have risen for more than a few weeks or months in the winter, depending on latitude. Leaellynosaura had extremely big eyes and its brain had big optic lobes, as if it had evolved to be routinely active in the dark. Regardless, the fact that it lived in tremendously cold temperatures led many scientists to believe that Leallynasaura was warm-blooded.

Jainosaurus

     Jainosaurus (Jain's lizard) was a huge titanosaurid dinosaur of India and wider Asia, which lived in the Maastrichtian (approximately 68 mya). An herbivorous quadruped, an adult Jainosaurus would have measured around 18 m long and 6m high. No accurate estimate of the weight has yet been made.

      The taxonomic rank of Jainosaurus is doubtful on many fronts. The first remains found were secret as Antarctosaurus septentrionalis by Friedrich von Huene and Matley in 1933, but in 1995 Hunt, Locley, Lucus & Meyer recognized them as forming a distinct genus. However, Jain himself (for whom the lizard is named) now believes that the remains stand for merely a young or female Titanosaurus and not a distinctive genus at all. It is unlikely that the matter will be determined soon as so few remains have been found - only a basicranium and partial postcranial.

Claosaurus

    Claosaurus, (meaning "broken lizard"), was a prehistoric hadrosaurid (duck-billed dinosaur) living throughout the Santonian Age of the Late Cretaceous.

    Evidence of its continued existence was first found near the Smoky Hill River in Kansas, USA in the form of incomplete skull fragments and as an uttered postcranial skeleton. Originally called Hadrosaurus agilis (Marsh, (1872), it became known as Claosaurus agilis in 1890 when major differences among this specimen and the Hadrosaurus came to light.

   Claosaurus had a slim body and slim feet, with long legs, small arms, and long, stiff tail. It almost certainly grew to a length of about 12 to 15 feet (3.5 meters) and weighed roughly 470 kg.

    The specimen of Claosaurus agilis is in the Yale Peabody Museum. Claosaurus is one of the most prehistoric hadrosaurids and appears to have retained the first metatarsal in its foot, a feature which other hadrosaurids lost.

    It appears to have walked on its hind legs, plummeting to all fours only to graze. Like other hadrosaurs, it was an herbivore.

    Original, as described by Marsh, 1872:

1. Notice of a new species of Hadrosaurus; by O. C. MARSH. In the middle of the Reptilian remains obtained by the Yale College party throughout the past summer (1871) was the better part of a skeleton of a small Hadrosaurus, discovered by the writer in the blue Cretaceous shale near the Smoky Hill River, in Western Kansas. This species was somewhat lesser than H. minor Marsh, from New Jersey, and hardly more than one-third the bulk of H. Foulkei of Leidy. It was of more slender proportions, with the tail much elongated.

The cervical vertebras are proportionally shorter than in H. Foulkei, and the caudals appear denser, some of the distal caudals have a longitudinal ridge on the lateral surface. The sacrum, which is calm of six confluent vertebras, is 414 mm. in length. The first caudal vertebra is 62 mm. in length. The feet are nearly entire, and are proportionally more slender than the known leftovers of the other species would indicate. The third metatarsal is 235 mm. in length and 77 mm. in slanting diameter at its distal end. This species, which may be called Hadrosaurus agilis, will be fully described in this Journal at an early on day.

• Claosaurus facts:

Name:     Claosaurus (broken lizard)
Size:     12 to 15 feet long and 6 ft tall
Main Facts:     The feet of Claosaurus are nearly entire, and are proportionally more slender than the known leftovers of the other species.

Tarbosaurus

Tarbosaurus was a associate of the dinosaur family of tyrannosaurids, which flourished during the Late Cretaceous. It is sometimes built-in in the genus Tyrannosaurus.

Although many specimens of this genus have been establishing, little definite data is confirmed on the dinosaur as of 1986, though it was supposed to share many characteristics with other tyrannosaurids. During studies of the animal, the upper jaw proved attractive, as it possessed more than 20 extremely large, knife-shaped teeth. The skull in universal seems to have many similarities with its North American cousin, Tyrannosaurus rex, prompting many to put it in the Tyrannosaurus genus (the resulting designation would then be Tyrannosaurus bataar). The close similarities have also prompted some scientists to suggest a likely link between the North American and Eurasian continents at that time, perhaps in the form of a land bridge.

Only one species of Tarbosaurus, T. bataar, has been formally established.

Weight Not known, had lighter bones than Tyrannosaurus rex, thus probable less than 7 short tons (6 metric tons)

Length diverse from 33 to 46 feet (10-14 meters)

Height diverse from 14 feet, 6 inches to 20 feet (4.5-6 meters)

Found Mongolia

Period Late Cretaceous

Family tyrannosaurids