Page 35 - Everything You Know About Dinosaurs is Wrong
P. 35
Recently found fossils have made some palaeontologists think that DIPLODOCUS had a horny beak which would have been helpful for stripping small leaves off trees.
Although these dinosaurs definitely looked different from DIPLODOCUS, how do we even know what DIPLODOCUS really looked like?
Very new fossils have made some other palaeontologists believe that DIPLODOCUS’s eyes might have been protected from the sun by some bony eye-shades.
DIPLODOCUS was only recently found to have had a row of 18-centimetre-long, hard, thin spikes running down its back.
DINO FACT!
These enormous sauropods all evolved from animals like the tiny SATURNALIA that lived in the Triassic period.
Although most of DIPLODOCUS’s tail was held out straight, the
end was very thin and would have hung limp
like a whip. This might have been used
as a pretty scary
defence against predators.
The sauropods continued to evolve into strange forms until 66 million years ago, when they died out along with the rest of the non-bird dinosaurs. By the time they disappeared some species from what is now South America had become the largest animals ever to walk the Earth - life on land would N E V E R be this big again!
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