Dinosaur

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Wheee!

Dinosaurs were creatures of vastly varying size, from over 20 times the size of an elephant to smaller than a chicken, that mostly died out about 65 million years ago,[1] unless you believe The Flintstones was a documentary are a creationist, in which case they died a few thousand years ago in the global flood because Noah didn't have room for them in the ark. An eminent Christian, Jack Chick, propounds an alternative theory:[2] some dinosaurs were in Noah's ark, and hence were saved. Unfortunately, in the flood many plants were killed. As a consequence, the atmosphere after the flood was poor in oxygen. Big animals, such as dinosaurs, need lots of oxygen! Luckily, some dinosaurs survived even this - ever heard of dragons? This does not make any sense considering that the average dinosaur was about the size of a van. Why would larger modern animals, such as elephants, survive but not the smaller dinosaurs? Simple. That theory is wrong.

Another popular idea is that Satan put all the fossils in the ground to trick humans into believing evolution. Another, somewhat more insane idea is that dinosaurs were real, and Satan's own creation.[3]

Creationists also tend to use the movie Jurassic Park as a source for their knowledge of these animals and thus see them as monsters.

Seriously, dinosaur fossils are really neat and give a grand view of the wonder and splendor that our world has seen in the past. They also showcase how cool evolution really is.

Dinosaurs are frequently defined[4] as everything descended from the most recent common ancestor of Triceratops and the house sparrow. Thus, birds are the last of the dinosaurs.

Contents

[edit] Well-known dinosaurs

Jesus' famous Gordito impersonation
  • Bully for Brontosaurus is a good book about science-type things.
  • Tyrannosaurus rex - Ooh, scary, and children love them. Giant chickens with sharp teeth, basically. Oh, and no wings. Creationists love to think that T.rex was the most powerful of God's creations and were unkillable by anything.
  • Spinosaurus - Another scary dinosaur, bigger than the T-Rex and is competing with it for the love of children. Most likely a piscivore.
  • Triceratops - A three-horned variety, and arguably one of the most iconic after T. rex. Possibly had quill-like protofeathers on its back.
  • Iguanodon - One of the earliest dinosaurs found. It was initially thought to be a creature with a small horn, but better evidence altered this theory to show that it was actually a modified thumb.[5] It also might have had the ability to chew its food by moving the food around with its cheeks and biting down.
  • Stegosaurus - A herbivore with spikes on its tail and plates on its back. It lived in the Jurassic and had the brain the size of a walnut along with a bundle of nerves in the spine which might have aided the brain in bodily controls.
  • Brontosaurus - an obsolete name for Apatosaurus, a large quadrupedal herbivore with a long tail and a long neck. The theories surrounding the shape of the brontosaurus are owned by an elk Anne Elk[6].
  • Velociraptor - small and fast feathered predator, about the size of a large dog with feathers. Sometimes called simply "raptor". Creationists see them as scaly abominations.
  • Deinonychus - what everybody generally imagines when they think of Velociraptor. Man-sized pack hunters. Growing in popularity among children. They also possessed feathers.
  • Technically, every bird that is well known.
  • Barney - a modern dinosaur.
RAWRRRR! (citation needed)

[edit] Sounds

The sounds made by dinosaurs are currently unknown, but obviously they mostly went "RAWR." Because everybody knows that dinosaurs went "RAWR."[7]

In reality, it is most likely they they made sounds similar to crocodiles, due to having similar throat structures.

[edit] Colors

For years it was said that humans would never know the color of dinosaurs. However, recent studies have shown that well preserved dinosaur feathers hold fossilized melanosomes. Melanosomes are cells that give color to feathers. The color of the feathers can be determined by the shape of the melanosomes. When the fossils of Sinosauropteryx were examined, the dinosaur was discovered to have brown colored feathers and stripes on its tail. Due to the fossil's condition, the full coloration of Sinosauropteryx could not be determined. It wasn't until an Anchiornis[wp] fossil was examined that the full body coloration of a dinosaur was known.[8] Anchiornis was mostly black and white. Its torso was black and the feathers on its limbs and tail had large bands of white. Anchiornis had a reddish-orange feather head crest with speckles of the same color on the side of its face. Since then, even more dinosaurs' colors have been realized. [9]

[edit] List of dinosaurs with known coloration

  • Anchiornis- black and white with orange crest [10]
  • Microraptor- iridescent black [11]
  • Sinosauropteryx (partially)- probably reddish orange with a striped tail [12]
  • Archaeopteryx- at least partially black [13]

[edit] See also

A bit of Hadrosaurus bone

[edit] Footnotes

  1. http://web.ukonline.co.uk/a.buckley/dino.htm
  2. http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1038/1038_01.asp
  3. Did God Destroy the Dinosaurs? at the Kook museum
  4. There is, of course, fiddling around the edges of this. See dinosaur[wp].
  5. Science; it works bitches.
  6. "Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses on Youtube.
  7. Except for those that went "GRONK!"
  8. National Geographic
  9. Jersey Boy Hunts Dinosaurs blog
  10. National Geographic
  11. Smithsonian Mag blog
  12. National Geographic
  13. National Geographic


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