Decoding Fossils of Dinosaurs

Although the Ediacaran period was well before the first appearance of dinosaurs it shows that there were fossils many years ago. When dinosaurs first appeared things had changed there was still shallow water which meant that bones could be fossilized.

Dinosaurs come in many different colors and sizes. The lifespan of a dinosaur is 75 to 300 years. Their daily life is hunting, mating, using the bathroom, and migrating. The defense mechanisms helped them repair their injuries 150 mya. The bone structures are the skull, jaws, neck bones, vertebrae, thigh, pelvis, tail, and rib bone. Dinosaur’s average speed is about 27 mph. Dinosaurs find their food by hunting, which is each other and some eat plants. They reproduce by hatching newborns from eggs. Some communicate by their horns or flickering the tip of their tails. Baryonyx stomach contents were found to contain fish scales, is an example of predator-prey relationship. Some animals that are related to dinosaurs are lizards, because of their skin texture.

Because dinosaurs are animals that lived millions of years ago, we are entirely dependent on the fossils that they have left behind for any understanding that we hope to gain. As any paleontologist will tell you, fossil hunting is difficult. There are no certainties, no guarantees. A certain amount of luck is as valuable as any scientific knowledge.

According to Brad Peroney (2014), Carbon dating compares the amount of radioactive carbon to ordinary carbon in old objects to figure out how long ago something, or someone lived (Peroney, 2014). Carbon dating also called as radioactive carbon or carbon-14 dating is a method of age determination that depends upon the decay to nitrogen of radiocarbon (carbon-dating, 2015).Carbon-14 is continually formed in nature by the interaction of neutrons with nitrogen-14 in the

The oldest piece of evidence showing that the first dinosaurs showed up during the Triassic time period, are the fossil footprints found that date back 250 million years, although not everyone is convinced that the footprints are definite evidence. Scientists are not sure how to classify some of the earliest species found between the three main branches of the dinosaur family tree: Theropods( two-legged meat eaters), Sauropodomorphs(four-legged, long neck plant eaters), and Ornithiscians ( “bird hipped” dinosaurs).

The jurassic period was the second period of the mesozoic era and happened between 199 and 145 million years ago. The jurassic period is when the gigantic continent ( pangea ) split apart and into the other continents. This period is when the herbivores (plant eaters) came to existence. oceans full of fish, squid, and

Pangaea, the colossal supercontinent, was the first land mass on the Earth. It is a panoramic, conglomerate of all the continents, which existed during the Triassic and period. The word Triassic originates from a discovery made by the German paleontologist, Friedrich August von Alberti. In his discovery he identified and dismantled, three different layers in the rock strata which are now called the Bunter, Muschelkalk and Keuper. The original names for the rocks where the Trias, which later became the Triassic. The entire Triassic period occurred between 251 million and 199 million years ago, which is about 51 million year. It took 6 legacies of mass extinctions to get to the Triassic period. These extinctions led to the lives of many new organisms on our planet.

The key principle behind radiocarbon-14 dating is plants and animals exchange carbon with their surroundings and thus contain the same ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 once an organism dies it no longer exchanges carbon with its surroundings. The carbon-14 will slowly decay at a known rate decreasing the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14. Since the decay rate and original ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 is known we can determine how old a sample is by the amount of carbon-14 remaining. There are two ways to measure the carbon-12 to carbon-14 ratio. The first being beta counting. Beta counting was the first method used to measure carbon-14 levels in a sample. Two different type of beta counting were primarily used. The first of those being liquid

My data shows that the fossils found from different time periods isn’t constant. The most fossils that were found during a period was never closer to the time we live now. Fossils found in the past also went from hundreds found to less than a hundred. An explanation is that there could have been a catastrophe

The process of radiometric dating and radiocarbon dating consist of examining how much of the radioactive or carbon has decayed since the creation of rocks. While radiometric dating is assumed to be accurate to +/- 2,500 years and is just a small span of time for those believing in old

The most common type of body fossils are teeth and bones because dinosaur teeth sheds off which can be transported in different environments. Bones namely tendons and a single isolated bone can be replaced which then can be preserved. Furthermore, harder parts of the body are able to be preserved because of its durability. It’s rare to find complete skeletons because they are transported to other places and other body fossils decompose or chemicals can deteriorate the fossils.

“Dinosaurs. Earth shakers and plunderers. Killing machines. The original experts in martial arts.” – (The Dinosaurs: The Monsters Emerge, PBS, 1992.) Most people, especially kids, know dinosaurs as big movie monsters and hostile creatures for the good guys to fight. But I never possessed that interest. My attraction came from the fact that these “alien” creatures beyond any human imagination were real animals that actually lived on this planet. That animals such as Therizinosaurus, Deinocheirus, Shunosaurus, Gigantoraptor, and Concavenator were all conceived by nature and not Hollywood. There are so many of them on record with such stunning characteristics, the most striking diversity, and the most remarkable evolutionary journeys known

Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon (14C), a radioactive isotope of carbon.

Jurassic is a period of time with Dinosaurs, rodents and birds. There were also island seas consisting of sharks, sea monsters and blood-red planktons. The existing plants in that period were cycads, ferns and conifers. The Mesozoic era was about 245 million years ago to 65 years ago, so it almost lasted about 180 years in total. The Mesozoic era is divided into three periods of Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. Mesozoic era means middle animals and it is the era, which the word’s fauna has changed from what is in the Paleozoic era and the most famous organisms of this era are dinosaurs. In the Mesozoic era, the extinction of more than 90 percent of species in the earth was observed and the reason behind it was mostly volcanic eruptions and climate changes. On the other hand, this era had massive changes that represented ecological niches and rise to new creatures such as rodent-size mammals and first dinosaurs. In Triassic, which was the first period of Mesozoic, the mammals and first dinosaurs existed. Later than that, the second period was Jurassic, which giant shaped dinosaurs and other kinds of dinosaurs were developed. Besides that the first flowering plants and primitive birds, with long teeth appeared in that era as well.

These techniques led to the discovery of the boundary between the two eras. A single thin layer of clay found within predominantly limestone rocks established this. By comparing the marine life found in, above, and below the clay, the marine life, like the dinosaurs, had been terribly affected by the extinction event. The percentage of life in the upper layers was dramatically lower than that in the lower. This was far more compelling than what was suggested by dinosaur’s fossils.