Dinosaur

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Dinosaurs (or Terrible Lizards if you want to get fancy) are a group of very diverse animals, ranging in size from extinct forms over 20 times the size of an elephant to the living hummingbirds, that mostly died out about 66 million years ago, unless you are a creationist, in which case they (because clearly birds are not dinosaurs) 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: 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 prehistoric dinosaurs, need lots of oxygen! Luckily, some dinosaurs survived even this — ever heard of dragons (including those imposing creatures from the Jurassic Park films)? 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 hypothesis is wrong.

Another popular idea is that Satan put all the fossils in the ground to trick humans into believing evolution, or perhaps God put them there to test humanity's faith. A similar idea was that the fossils were faked by scientists. These beliefs come from the idea that since dinosaurs aren't mentioned in the Bible, then they are obviously not real, never mind the fact that millions of other real (living) animals aren't mentioned in the Bible either, cats being a glaring example (at least as far as most people's conception of what "The Bible" is). Another, somewhat more insane idea is that dinosaurs were real, and Satan's own creation.

Creationists also tend to have an early 20^th century view of dinosaurs and thus see them as slow moving, cold-blooded reptiles that could be compared to dragons. Creationists, also as a result, tend to ignore that birds are a type of dinosaur as well. Creationists also tend to ignore the diversity of dinosaurs and their ecologies when making their "arguments".

Seriously though, 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 as everything descended from the most recent common ancestor of Triceratops and the house sparrow. Thus, birds are the last of the dinosaurs. There is no real reason to exclude birds from dinosaurs as a group for any rational reason either — many popularly known carnivorous dinosaurs almost certainly had feathers and are significantly more similar morphologically to birds than to large quadrupedal herbivorous dinosaurs like Triceratops.

Well-known dinosaurs

Jesus' famous Gordito impersonation

• Tyrannosaurus rex — Ooh, scary, and kids love them. Dubbed the "prize fighter of antiquity" by its discoverer Barnum Brown. It had a bone-crushing bite and ridiculously stubby yet surprisingly powerful arms with two-fingered hands. Paleontologist Jack Horner has suggested it was a scavenger, an idea which gained significant attention during the 1990s but was disproven by the discovery of a duck-billed Edmontosaurus fossil which showed scarring from a T. rex bite which had later healed. Astonishingly, creationists claim this terrifying beast used its giant yet shallow-rooted steak-knife teeth for cracking open coconuts and slicing fruit! (T. rex's teeth were more like railroad spikes than knives, and they were obviously deeply-rooted.) Not to be confused with the wingless dragons like the ones you see in Jurassic Park.
• Spinosaurus — Another large carnivore theropod dinosaur with a large rectangular sail on its back. It gained infamy thanks to its appearance in Jurassic Park III and is competing with T. rex for the love of children. It is thought to have been primarily aquatic due to its short hindlimbs, which wouldn't have allowed it to move quickly on land.
• Triceratops — A three-horned variety, a contemporary of T. rex and arguably one of the most iconic of all dinosaurs. It had a large serrated bony crest on its head which might have shielded its neck from attack and been used for display. It still exists, despite recent hysteria concerning its relationship to Torosaurus (see section below for details.)
• 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. 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 had a tiny brain and a glycogen body near its hips. In the past this glycogen body was misinterpreted as a second brain which would have aided in locomotion. It is the state dinosaur of Colorado.
• Brontosaurus — A large quadrupedal herbivore with a long tail and a long neck. Formerly believed to live in swamps, the fossil evidence suggests that they were active terrestrial grazers like giant reptilian giraffes. Once thought to be synonymous with Apatosaurus, but a closer inspection and comparison of fossils in 2015 shown it was indeed a separate genus. Cryptozoologists claim they aren't extinct, but no evidence to substantiate their claims has ever surfaced. The theories surrounding the shape of the Brontosaurus are owned by an elk Anne Elk.
• Diplodocus — Similar to Brontosaurus, only longer and more lightly-built. It was thought that it and its fellow sauropods might have had spines that run along its back in a single row like an iguana, but recent studies have shown these spines were actually spread across the back.
• Brachiosaurus — Another sauropod. Unlike the smaller Brontosaurus and Diplodocus it has longer forelimbs, a domed head, and a shorter tail. It was once thought to have nostrils on the top of its head, but later studies shown they were located on the snout.
• Parasaurolophus — A hadrosaur or duck-billed dinosaur well-known for the tube-like crest on the back of its head that connects all the way to its nose. Creationists think the crest housed glands like the bombardier beetle and thus it was used for breathing fire, when in reality it is for resonating sounds (it had a non-flameproof channel connecting to the lungs).
• Ankylosaurus — A large herbivore with an armored carapace and a bony lump at the end of its tail. It lived alongside Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. Well-known for being capable of disabling predators with a swipe from its clubbed tail.
• Allosaurus — A large meat-eater from the same time period and region as Stegosaurus and Brontosaurus. The state dinosaur of Utah. It is often confused with T. rex despite having a more slender frame, teeth for slicing as opposed to puncturing, three fingers on each hand instead of two, longer arms, and stubby brow horns. It might have hunted in packs when going after sauropods.

Truly, the lord's most terrifying creatures (Changyuraptor yangi).

• Velociraptor — Small feathered dinosaur. Described in novels and films as larger, like its slightly close known cousin Deinonychus. One well-preserved fossil shows it locked in combat with a Protoceratops, again flying in the face of creationist claims that predatory dinosaurs were actually herbivores.
• Deinonychus — Medium feathered dinosaur, slightly close known relative of Velociraptor. The discovery inspired the notion that dinosaurs were intelligent, active animals rather than swamp-dwelling brutes doomed to obsolescence.
• Troodon — It had one of the highest brain-to-body mass ratios of all dinosaurs, leading to speculation that it could have evolved into a sapient humanoid being if the dinosaurs hadn't (mostly) gone extinct. Sometimes cited as proof by conspiracy theorists for the existence of the so-called "Reptilians", despite the fact that Troodon was one of the most birdlike dinosaurs.
• Brachylophosaurus — a large hadrosaur that lived during the Cretaceous period of North America.
• Hadrosaurus — The type genus for Hadrosaurids, lived during the Late Cretaceous of North America (New Jersey). This was the first american dinosaur to be described.

• Every bird. Notable ones are in the appropriate page.
• Barney— a modern dinosaur who "entertains" children.
• Strom Thurmond

Non-dinosaurs

Not a dinosuar.

Many reptiles of the Mesozoic era have been grouped under "dinosaurs," however that label mostly applies to archosaurs with vertical rear legs underneath their body. The following are not dinosaurs:

• Marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs.
• Pterosaurs, which are not closely related to birds either.
• The precursor to mammals, pelycosaurs (also called "synapsids"), including Dimetrodon

Sounds

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

In reality, it is most likely that they made sounds similar to certain types of vultures, due to the lack of special throat structures necessary to produce anything but a droning hiss or cooing noises like modern pigeons and doves or otherwise closed-mouth vocalizations. Some hadrosaurs such as Parasaurolophus and Lambeosaurus might have used their hollow head crests to make trumpet sounds for anything from herding to calling out punk-ass predators.

The sounds made by current living dinosaurs can range from screeching buzzsaws to a child calling for help to melodies so wonderful they influenced classical composers.

Colors

For years, it was said that humans would never know the color of prehistoric dinosaurs. However, recent studies have shown that well-preserved dinosaur feathers and skins 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, though there is still some debate about which structures are melanosomes and which are bacteria. 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 fossil was examined that the full body coloration of a dinosaur was known. 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.

List of dinosaurs with known coloration

Feathered dinosaurs

• Anchiornis — black and white with orange crest
• Microraptor — iridescent black
• Sinosauropteryx (partially) — probably reddish orange with a striped tail
• Archaeopteryx — at least partially black
• Beipiaosaurus — dark downy feathers that are dark brown in color
• Cruralispennia — iridescent black
• Caihong — iridescent black

Non-feathered dinosaurs

• Psittacosaurus - Light (underneath) and darker (overneath)
• Borealopelta - Reddish brown

The Zuiyō-Maru carcass

See the Wikipedia article on Zuiyo-maru carcass.

Fossilized skeleton of Meyerasaurus victor, a plesiosaur.

On 25 April 1977, while off the coast of New Zealand, the crew of the Japanese fishing trawler Zuiyō Maru hauled aboard a 32 foot (9.75 m) long, recently killed carcass that looked remarkably like the remains of a plesiosaur. The crew tossed the carcass back overboard to keep the rotting flesh from spoiling the rest of their catch, only taking a few photos and tissue samples. By testing the amino acids from a sample of muscle tissue, marine biologists determined that the carcass was actually the remains of a basking shark. (As luck would have it, the long necks and flippers of basking sharks make their denuded carcasses resemble plesiosaur skeletons.) The decomposing remains of basking sharks and other marine animals have been throughout history confused with prehistoric animals which creationists point to as 'proof'.

Despite the tissue analysis, the claim that this is evidence for surviving plesiosaurs is still used by cryptozoologists and creationists. All that sciency amino acid stuff wasn't enough to fool YEC "educational" organizations like Accelerated Christian Education. To them – yessiree Bob! – it was a plesiosaur, which somehow disproves evolution, dontcha know!

Oh, and do you know the funniest part? Plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs. (Plesiosauria is not a sub-clade of Dinosauria — instead, both are nested in Sauropsida.)

"Triceratops doesn't exist!"

No!

Typing "triceratops" into your Google search bar (as of May 2014) brought up "not real" at the top of the autocorrections list. This brings up dozens of articles proclaiming the non-existence of this poor dinosaur (the Daily Mail is the source of one of these, as well as DNews and RationalSkepticism.org. Come on guys, you should know better.) Fortunately, the BBC and the Smithsonian came to save the day, clarifying that one study found the Triceratops to be the juvenile members of a related genus, Torosaurus. However, other studies have contested this finding, so it is not even certain that this is true. Even if it were, the name "Triceratops" has been in use for longer and, as is customary in the world of paleontology, would be the name used if the two genera were to merge.

Almost turning Triceratops into the next Pluto provides just another example of how the media often get science wrong.

See also

• Feathered dinosaurs
• Bird
• Genesis Park
• Kent Hovind
• Human-dinosaur coexistence
• Jurassic Park
• The Mysterious Origins of Man an entire film dedicated to proving man walked with dinosaurs.
• Dinosaur Adventure Land
• Dinosaur denialism — a group of creationists considered too crazy by even most other creationists
• DINO — the political version that refuses to go extinct

Gallery

Reconstructed fossils and artistic views of various dinosaurs:

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  A T. rex named "Sue". How do you do?

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  An artistic depiction of T. rex

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  A reconstructed fossil Spinosaurus in swimming posture

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  A reconstructed fossil Triceratops

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  An artistic depiction of Triceratops horridus

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  Drawing of Iguanodon bernissartensis based on fossils

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  An artistic depiction of Iguanodon

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  A reconstructed fossil Stegosaurus stenops

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  A reconstructed fossil Brontosaurus excelsus

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  Two reconstructed fossils, a Giraffatitan brancai and a Diplodocus carnegii

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  A reconstructed fossil Diplodocus carnegiei

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  An artistic depiction of Brachiosaurus altithorax

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  A fossilized Parasaurolophus walkeri

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  An artistic depiction of Parasaurolophus

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  An artistic depiction of Ankylosaurus

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  A reconstructed fossil Allosaurus atrox

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  A reconstructed fossil Velociraptor skeleton

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  An artistic depiction of Velociraptor mongoliensis

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  Reconstructed fossils of Buitreraptor (foreground) and Deinonychus (background)

References

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