Page 18 - Everything You Know About Dinosaurs is Wrong
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Dinosaurs ruled the Earth
The ‘Age of the Dinosaurs’ started at the beginning of the Mesozoic era, during the Triassic period, right? Well, dinosaurs had some serious competition when they first evolved and weren’t actually very important for most of the Triassic.
Dinosaurs (and birds) are a type of animal called an archosaur. There is another type of archosaur alive today – the crocodiles and alligators. These aren’t very common in the wild now, apart from in places like Florida in the USA or sub-Saharan Africa, but back in the Triassic period, there would have been far more of the relatives of these reptiles around than dinosaurs.
 Other archosaurs that weren’t dinosaurs, called the aetosaurs, looked very different. Like the pig-sized STAGONOPELIS, which had a beak rather than teeth in their upper jaws and were vegetarian.
The poposaurs were another group of non-dinosaur archosaurs that were common during the Triassic. Some, like P O P O S A U R U S , looked quite dinosaur-like . . .
Some of these, like PARASUCHUS, looked very crocodile-like and probably lived around water.
. . . whilst others, like ARIZONASAURUS and the herbivorous LOTOSAURUS, grew sails on their backs!
Most aetosaurs, like DESMATOSUCHUS, were heavily armoured, so that they were protected against Triassic predators.
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