The Intro:
Ah yes!! The very first question everyone has when they hear the word ‘Dinosaur‘. The word ‘Dinosaur’ is from the Latin words, ‘Deino‘ and ‘Sauros‘ which respectively means ‘terrible‘ and ‘lizard‘. But that is just a word meaning but what does the word represent. It represents a group of highly-diverse reptiles of the animal clade, ‘Dinosauria‘ and this clade consists of reptiles of various sizes, shapes, attributes and so much more. Dinosaurs existed on Earth from the Triassic Period, round about 243 to 233 million years ago, and lived through the Jurassic Period and Cretaceous Period, around 66 million years ago, right until the a massive meteorite hit Earth and destroying almost all forms of life in that destruction.
Paleontologists call it the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event. After that the Dinosaurs we know from the fossils became extinct but they still live with us today, maybe one just sat on a branch of a tree near you. You might be wondering how could it be as you see it is only a bird and to tell you the truth, Birds are Dinosaurs. Now, don’t get scared but the Birds you see today have long lost almost all the features that made them the Dinosaurs we know from the fossils.
As you read further on, I will tell you how Birds are Dinosaurs but to clarify now, Dinosaurs we think about, the fossilized bones of dead reptiles long ago are more officially called as Non-Avian Dinosaurs and the ones that live now are called Avian Dinosaurs. So, I will be talking about the Non-Avian Dinosaurs whenever I say Dinosaurs from this post as well as other posts and I will call Avian Dinosaurs as Birds to make it clearer for you!
History:
Now that we know a little bit about what is a Dinosaur, let’s now talk about the History of dinosaurs. Dinosaur fossils have been known for a long time before it was officially described as ‘Dinosaur’. One of the more concrete examples would be a Chinese, geographical dictionary from around 265-316 AD where in that book it was written that they discovered ‘Dragon bones‘ which were used for medicinal reasons.
These ‘Dragon bones’ were nothing more than actual Dinosaur or other prehistoric animal bones because back then, people had no idea about scientific reasoning while in Europe, dinosaur fossils were generally believed to be the remains of giants and other biblical creatures. This is how many cultures across the world created ‘Dragons‘ with the amalgamation fish, reptiles and dinosaur fossils.
Later, around 1676, a Chemistry Professor at the University of Oxford, Robert Plot wrote the first ever scholarly writing on the dinosaur femur bone, Megalosaurus, but back then, they still had yet to describe it as a separate class of animals and thought the bones belonged to a Titan or a Giant like the ones in myths. Then, in 1815 – 1824, the first Reader of Geology at the University of Oxford, William Buckland, collected more fossilized bones of Megalosaurus and became the first person to describe a non-avian dinosaur in a scientific journal.
The second non-avian dinosaur genus to be identified, Iguanodon, was according to legend discovered in 1822 by Mary Ann Mantell, the wife of English geologist Gideon Mantell who in fact had required remains years earlier. Gideon Mantell recognized similarities between his fossils and the bones of modern iguanas. He published his findings in 1825. The study of these “great fossil lizards” became of great interest to European and American scientists, and in 1842, the English paleontologist Sir Richard Owen, coined the term “Dinosaur“, using it to refer to the “distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles” that were then being recognized in England and around the world.
At that time, dinosaurs were depicted as very large, horrific, lizard monsters that ruled the Earth many years ago. Sir Richard Owen wanted to showcase the greatness and ferocity of these past animals that he constructed the Crystal Palace Park where there were statues of Hylaeosaurus, Iguanodon, & Megalosaurus along with a Pterosaurs, and Marine reptiles like, Ichthyosaurus, Mosasaurus, Plesiosaurus & Teleosaurus. The park opened around 1855 and has become a very iconic park in England.
After that, the rest is another history. Many paleontologists started digging up all the places possible which in itself became a war. Everyone would claim to find a fossil as if it was gold. Because of this, very soon a female paleontologist would come into the scene, Mary Anning, who discovered the marine reptiles and flying reptiles that roamed alongside the dinosaurs. But, but, the 2 most influential paleontologists would be Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.
These 2 American paleontologists would start a war of finding the most amount of dinosaurs in USA and that is why our understanding of dinosaurs were in full speed and progressed a lot when compared with other sciences. The appropriately named, Bone Wars, gave rise to the very popular dinosaurs like the Coelophysis and Camarasasurus by Mr. Cope and Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Allosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Torosaurus, Dryosaurus, and Ceratosaurus by Mr. Marsh. As you can see clearly Mr. Marsh won this war by the sheer number of 80 prehistoric species of animals discovered by him while Mr. Cope discovered 56 prehistoric species of animals.
But then World War II happened and destroyed many species which were collected in museums throughout, one of the popular dinosaurs which was destroyed was Spinosaurus. But after the war ended, paleontology was back in action and it soon became more widespread and the research ventured out into countries like India, Japan, China as well as continents of Africa, Australia and South America.
New findings, like the full skeleton of Deinonychus, discovered by paleontologist John Ostrom, made paleontologists rethink how they viewed dinosaurs. Now, instead of viewing them as slow, lumbering, tail-dragging monsters, they were viewed as active, horizontal stance, caring animals. They also stopped mixing dinosaurs from different time periods in the paleoart. And now, the depiction of dinosaurs has changed to become more than monsters and a part of our Earth’s showcase of untamed nature.
And now, we have found more than 1300 species of dinosaurs only, and that number is increasing every year and it makes sense, considering the diversity of life that exists now, we barely scratching the surface and many species may not have been able to be fossilized and some may have been destroyed through our work or by nature. We will never know the complete natural history of Earth but we can only just keep on digging and keep increasing our knowledge about it.
Evolutionary History:
We have went over the human history and how Dinosaurs came to be in our eyes, but now, let’s check out how did Dinosaurs came to be Dinosaurs. Before the Triassic Period, there was an even more destructive extinction event, Permian-Triassic Extinction, that wiped out almost 96% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial life. The reptiles which survived the extinction event exploded onto the Earth’s face and at that time, there were all these weird kinds of reptiles never ever seen before.
While not all of them are considered Dinosaurs but this was truly the Age of Reptiles. The reptile diversification was crazy but among the animal types, Dinosaurs were slowly coming into the scene. One of the first dinosaurs in Triassic Period was a small dinosaur called Nyasaurus. They were smaller and faster and very nimble compared to other, more robust and heavier and slower reptiles. Dinosaurs had massively different physiology from the other reptiles which gave them an edge in the competition. They could run, hide, eat and steal and there fast-moving lifestyle helped them out a lot that by the end of Triassic Period, came the Jurassic Period, the Age of Dinosaurs!!
Jurassic Period is when the Dinosaurs started to rise up and they truly started to rule all the parts of land on Earth. The prehistoric flyers and swimmers were close to Dinosaurs but not actually Dinosaurs. It is more like how Crocodiles and Snakes and Lizards are related but different. In this period, Dinosaur spread to almost all niches of the ecosystem, from the small herbivores to large carnivores. This is also when Dinosaurs separated into 2 distinctive groups because of their hip bone structure and those groups had even more diversification.
The groups ‘Saurischia‘ and ‘Ornithischia‘. Saurischia means ‘lizard-hipped bone’ while Ornithischia means ‘bird-hipped bone’. Here is an important thing to remember, Birds evolved from Saurischia, not from Ornithischia. Ornithischia, while their hip bones resembled that of a bird, there has been no clear indication that these groups of Dinosaurs would evolve into Birds where Saurischia, even though their hip bones resembled that of a lizard, the hips slowly but surely changed into more like that of an actual bird.
So, even though there is that similarity but there is no connection, this can also be an example of ‘Convergent Evolution‘ where a body plan or structure is highly preferred that one or more separate groups of animals have almost the similar body plan or structure.
All Dinosaurs, Avian and Non-Avian, did evolve from basal Saurischia from the Triassic but changed in the Jurassic. Saurischia also had 2 main subgroups of dinosaurs, ‘Theropods‘ and ‘Sauropods‘. Theropods are the 2-legged dinosaurs which mainly ate meat while later, some would learn to eat plants. Sauropods on the other hand, were 2-legged first but slowly, with the preference in diet became plants and also needed a more a larger digestive system, the increase in body mass made them 4-legged and also preferring leaves of the plants than bushes and shrubs, their necks started to become longer.
Surprisingly, the Sauropod evolution did not take long as the Jurassic Period would see some of the largest Sauropods and this is just the start. Among the most popular Saurischians in Jurassic Period would be Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Compsognathus, Dilophosaurus, Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Camarasaurus, Cetiosaurus, Diplodocus, and so many more.
That is all good but Ornithischia took diversification more seriously because even though they started off from 2 main groups, Thyreophora and Cerapoda, they evolved into more distinctive subgroups and the main 5 subgroups are Stegosauria, Ankylosauria, Pachycephalosauria, Ceratopsia, and Ornithopoda.
Ornithischia is probably the most diverse groups of Dinosaurs ever and you can clearly see a lot of them in the next Period for Dinosaurs. But Jurassic is when they started off so there are some popular Ornithischians but not a lot of species but here are some like the Stegosaurus, Lesothosaurus, Dryosaurus, Camptosaurus, Scutellosaurus, and Scelidosaurus.
Some of the Ornithischians were a lot more basal forms than Cretaceous but Stegosauria diversified a lot more and covered many different niches in the ecosystem. Unfortunately, Jurassic Period is also the time when Stegosauria flourished the most because by the Cretaceous, most of them became extinct and Ankylosauria came in to replace them. And soon we move on to the Cretaceous Period.
Cretaceous Period, what can I not say about the Cretaceous Period. Cretaceous Period is the period in which Dinosaur diversification and spread was to the max. Literally every corner of the Earth has a Cretaceous Dinosaur. Be it defined or undefined. Heck, even in places like Malaysia, not known for paleontology, has found tooth fossils that resembles a Spinosauridae.
It is not quite surprising as Thailand has their own Spinosauridae, Siamosaurus and there could have been species that moved onto Malaysia but this goes to show that Spinosauridae, only kind of group already covered so much of the planet, from South America to Africa to Europe and finally Asia. That’s not all, there have been clues that some Asian species moved to North America and flourished even further.
Wanna guess?? Well I will tell, the tyrannosaurs, ceratopsians, titanosaurs, as well as the pachycephalosaurs. Even probably some hadrosaurs and raptors as well. Paleontologists can definitely say that Tyrannosaurs were an invasive in the North American ecosystem. Probably around the Early Cretaceous, the Jurassic Theropods were not thriving unlike the Jurassic and then came the Tyrannosaurs and decimated that niche and took over the niche of the apex predator in North America.
Not only that, if you look at the most popular North American Cretaceous Dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, Ornithomimus, Pachycephalosaurus, Edmontosaurus, and so many more have an Asian version that appeared earlier and also looked like an earlier form of the American counterparts like Tarbosaurus, Protoceratops, Pinacosaurus, Gallimimus, Prenocephale, and Shantungosaurus.
Not only that but Titanosaurs spread like wildfire in every continent of the Earth. Isisaurus, Dreadnoughtus, Argentinosaurus, Alamosaurus, Paludititan, and Rapetosaurus and so much more that I cannot even count. While most of them are fragmentary fossils but the fact that they diversified so much to the point where there were multiple generas at the same time is just crazy.
Titanosaurs are the pinnacle of diversification with 49 generas but they were nothing compared to another group of herbivores, Hadrosaurs, which had 54 species. Some of them include, Lambeosaurus, Tsintaosaurus, Corythosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Edmontosaurus, Olorotitan, Maiasaura, Shantungosaurus, and so much more.
Wait a minute, I just got some news that Hadrosaurs were nothing when compared with Ceratopsia which were around 73 described species. Now this is crazy, I always check for something only to see I am wrong again like this is so crazy. I am probably sure you already know but I will just name some anyway like the Triceratops, Torosaurus, Medusaceratops, Pachyrhinosaurus, Protoceratops, Psittacosaurus, Udanoceratops, Koreaceratops, Sinoceratops, Zuniceratops, Chasmosaurus, Styracosaurus, Titanoceratops, and so many more.
I am already tired from naming so many different species that my head is spinning. I mean there is a reason why there is so many species because this was the longest period for Dinosaurs existence. This period is also the point where some non-avian Dinosaurs were evolving into avian Dinosaurs. Yes, this is the moment when birds started to come into being.
There were four distinct groups, Palaeognathae, Anseriformes, Galliformes, and Neoaves which started to become more prominent and were able to survive the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event. The only group of Dinosaurs that survived this long history and still continuing strong. It is impressive to see how many birds species exists now and then. Do let me know down in the comments if you want to know more about the birds of Mesozoic Era and the ones after Mesozoic but are extinct now.
And that is mainly it for the Evolutionary History of Dinosaurs. This is how Dinosaurs dominated and ruled the Earth for an astonishing 180 million years. Like you cannot even put this into perspective, us humans have been on this planet for around 200000 years. We have not even reached a million years, we have not even lived half a million years and we are already causing so much problems and destruction on our planet than any species has ever done.
Dinosaurs lived so much longer than us and are still with us as they fly across the sky, swim around in lakes and oceans or even run across large plains. So, make sure to protect and volunteer in any conservation programs for any animals as they were here before us and we must show that respect and us being sentient beings, it is our duty to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
Cultural Depictions:
As we become smarter and gain more knowledge in every generation, our science changes alongside us too. Remember how I showed in the beginning of this post on how paleontologists viewed Dinosaurs when they discovered it like some oversized, dumb lizards that were so stupid that they killed themselves. Well, now that is the most outdated depiction of all time that now it is considered as a fictional art piece of humanity rather than a scientific depiction of Dinosaurs.
Same thing around 1900s when dinosaurs started to become more popular and more skeletons were being found in place of fragmentary fossils, that is when they became bloodcurdling roaring monsters who always fought with one another. Carnivores walking like a human and all the Dinosaurs dragged their tails and every Dinosaur ever found existed together, does not matter if a Dinosaur is from Triassic in Cretaceous Period. Even Sauropods fought against Theropods with their mouths like what??
Finally came the Dinosaur Renaissance, ignited by the Blockbuster Hollywood film, Jurassic Park. The cultural impact that Jurassic Park had on dinosaurs and its depiction is undeniable. If Jurassic Park did not exist, who knows long it would have taken for even public audiences to have a walnut-size worth of interest. It is already hard nowadays to make people interested in anything when everyone is concerned about the problems in the moment that people forget what makes them interested in something and become curious and passionate in.
We become disillusioned in the race of life and life just becomes so dull. Which is why, for me, Dinosaurs hold a special place in my heart and not just me, but many people around the world. Our interest and love Dinosaurs gave rise to so many dinosaur content that here I am making content for people who love or even has a walnut-size of interest. Because of which, Dinosaurs changed their depiction again, becoming more horizontal, fast-moving, carnivores are still vicious, herbivores looking more built for defense and tails finally rose up from the ground.
Some of the depictions shown in Jurassic Park are still used today with Dilophosaurus having a frill and Velociraptor being 6 feet tall when they are supposed to be 2 feet tall but it is changing again with more modern documentaries and paleoart coming into play. Entertainment media still has yet to catch up and capitalize this change because they don’t want to take risk and it is like a whole history repeating itself again and again.
So if you have any idea in mind using modern, realistic Dinosaurs, who sleep, drink water, play with one another, get bullied by some smaller Dinosaurs only because there were more in numbers or even herbivores chomping down on other smaller Dinosaurs, yeah! Think about it for a second, a Triceratops straight up eating a baby Tyrannosaurus who just hatched! Make anything you want with modern Dinosaurs with the quality and respect you have for Dinosaurs and I am sure it will be a big hit.
Other than Jurassic franchise who has a cheat code unlocked for box office success, many film who try to capitalize from the hype is easily destroyed like the AI-designed Dinosaur film 65. You probably do not know what I am talking about and so here is the link.
But to get to my point, cultural depiction will always change but it is for the best to move on with the change rather than being stuck in the past. Dinosaurs have moved on from the devastating extinction event to the skies and so should our understanding and depiction of these magnificent animals that existed in our homes long ago. You never when a non-avian Dinosaur just walked by as a migratory route or something.
My wish for Dinosaur media would be an epic, action-packed Anime with modern Dinosaur designs. I have some ideas but it will not happen for a long while and I hope we continue to live on peacefully so that I can bring my ideas to you!! But for now, if you would like me to design dinosaurs for your ideas, you are at the right place as I am offering my drawing skills to draw dinosaurs for you.
It is just a simple commission I am doing currently and this helps me directly in my effort to bring you dinosaur blog posts and so if you have any ideas you would like me to draw, I will be glad to help you out. Until next time, bye bye and see you in other posts!!!
