Millions of

years ago,
Great beasts called
"dinosaurs" thundered
over the earth.
Yet up until the last
century, when the
first dinosaur fossils
were discovered, no
one even imagined
such animals existed.

Dinosaurs
Before there were any people there
were dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs were one of several kinds
of prehistoric reptiles that lived during
the Mesozoic Era the Age of the
Reptiles

The name dinosaur comes from the

term Dinosauria, which means
terrible lizards.

Dinosaur is the name of a group of

prehistoric reptiles that ruled the earth
about 160 million years ago.
These animals died out millions of
years ago, but they have fascinated
people ever since they were first
described in the early 1800s.

Kinds of
Dinosaurs

Allosaurus
Do you know
what the
Utah State
Fossil is?

The Utah State Fossil:

The Allosaurus

The allosaurus was

designated
the State Fossil in 1988.
More allosaurus specimens
have been found in two of
Utah's quarries than any
other dinosaur. Sixty

Big Al

Nickname: Different Lizard

Age: 160-145 million years ago during the late
Jurassic Period
Size: 35-40 feet long (as long as two big Python
snakes!)
Weight: Anywhere from 2 tons to over 5 tons
Characteristics: Sharp claws up to 6 inches long.
Teeth up to almost 4 inches long
Special Talents: Super smart compared to other
dinosaurs. Extremely fierce. Known to attack other
dinos twice his size.

Where Dinosaurs Lived

See the world as it looked du

the Jurassic Period!

The Jurassic climate was warm

The Air was damp, like a tropical f

Paleontology

Paleontology (PAY lee ahn TAHL uh jee), is the

study of animals, plants, and other organisms
that lived in prehistoric times (more than 5,500
years ago). Fossil remains of organisms occur in
layers of sedimentary rocks (rocks formed when
mineral matter settled out of air, ice, or water).
The organisms that are now fossils were alive
when the rocks were being formed. They were
buried and preserved as the layers of rock piled
up.

So what do you think

a Paleontologist is?
A paleontologist
is a scientist
who studies
paleontology,
learning about
the forms of life
that existed in
former geologic
periods, chiefly by
studying fossils.

Fossils are the reason we

have most of this
information. For almost 200
years, paleontologists have
been discovering fossils all
over the world. Theyve
identified more than 330
different kinds of dinosaur
fossils. And every year, they
find new fossils. These fossils

Dinosaur National Monument

Utah/Colorado

A stony frieze at one of the continents largest

and richest dinosaur quarries holds the bones of
beasts that ruled the Jurassic: stegosaurs,
allosaurs, apatosaurs and many more.

The first dinosaur to be described

scientifically was Megalosaurus
in 1824, by William Buckland.
Buckland (1784-1856) was a
Britishfossil hunter and
clergyman who discovered
some Megalosaurus fossils in
1819 and named the reptile
in 1824. It was the first dinosaur
ever described scientifically and
first theropod dinosaur discovered
(this is all in hindsight, because the dinosaurs had not yet been
recognized as a separate taxonomic group - the word dinosaur
hadn't even been invented yet).

Megalosaurus

Did They Have Colors?

It is very difficult to figure out how the

dinosaurs sounded, how they
behaved, or what color they were.

Plant-Eaters

Most dinosaurs were plant-eaters like:

Triceratops

What do we call plant-eaters?

Herbivores

Meat-Eaters

Some were meat-eaters like:

T-Rex

What do we call meat-eaters?

Carnivores

The Food Chain

Meat-eating animals (carnivores like Tyrannosaurus rex)

get their energy by eating other animals, mostly plant-eating
animals (herbivores like Triceratops). The herbivores
get their energy by eating plants (like cycads).

Where Did Everybody Go?

You may have

noticed that there
are no dinosaurs
around these days.
In fact, there haven
been any around for
about 66 million
years.

Well, we dont know the

real absolute theory of
how they became
extinct, but---One thing for sure is.
We will have an incredible time going
back in time to learn about these
marvelous creatures.