Category Zoology

                   The giant sauropod dinosaurs walked on all four legs, but many plant-eaters walked on either two legs or four, Scientists used to think that the dinosaurs which spent most of the time on two legs walked in an upright position. Their tail dragged along the ground or was used as a support when the animal reached up to browse from trees. We now know that these dinosaurs carried their body in a more horizontal position, so their shorter front legs could easily reach the ground. Their tail was used to balance the body, often sticking out stiffly. In some cases, the tail was made more rigid because it was supported by bony rods — these would have prevented the tail from bending easily.

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                       Many of the plant eating dinosaurs had a horny beak with which they cropped the vegetation that they ate. Unlike modern grazing animals, which use their lips to grasp food and pull it into their mouth, reptiles have no lips. The dinosaurs had to cut and tear their food with their beak, before grinding it up with rows of teeth at the back of their mouth.

                       True beaked dinosaurs evolved at about the same time as the appearance of the first modern flowering plants, so the parrot-like beak may have been an adaptation that allowed them to take advantage of this new food source.

                   Sauropods were a group of dinosaurs that were all built to the same general design. They all had a short barrel – shaped body to accommodate the huge gut needed to digest their vegetable diet, a very long neck and tail, a comparatively tiny head and peg-like teeth for grazing. The other important feature of the sauropods is that they were all enormous. They were extremely heavy, and because they lived in large herds they churned up the ground as they moved about. It is still possible to see the damage caused by their movements in the ancient rock layers where fossils of the sauropods have been found.

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                        Triceratops and its relatives were large plant-eating dinosaurs very similar to the modern rhinoceros. They even had large horns like the modern animal. Members of the Triceratops family were large, bulky animals that walked on all fours. They are thought to have lived in herds. As well as their huge horn, they had an enormous bony frill. It extended from the back of the head and over the shoulders, often with more spikes and horns attached. Triceratops reached a length of 9 m and a weight of about 5.5 tonnes.

                        Triceratops and its relatives probably used their horns in defence against attacks from flesh-eating dinosaurs. The frill might have been used by rival animals to create a threatening display.

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                    Some dinosaurs were about the size of a chicken, or even smaller. Compsognathus was only about 70 cm long and was very lightly built. It was an agile and fast-moving creature, and is thought to have lived on insects and small animals. Specimens of Compsognathus have been found with the fossilized remains of their last meal —a lizard — still preserved. The skeleton of Compsognathus is very similar to that of a modern bird.

                   Like modern flightless birds, it probably scuttled about in the undergrowth to protect it from larger predators, feeding on any small animals it could capture.

                     Iguanodon was a plant-eating dinosaur that stood 5 m high and was 7 m long. It was very common throughout Europe and the USA, and is thought to have lived in large herds. Unlike many similar plant-eaters, Iguanodon sometimes walked on two legs, or dropped down onto its front legs and walked on all four legs. We know this from its fossil footprints. Despite its size Iguanodon was often attacked by large flesh-eating dinosaurs. It defended itself using a large horny spur on its hand. Early palaeontologists thought that this was a horn, and they reconstructed the animal to look like a rhinoceros. Iguanodon was a very successful animal and survived for about 30 million years. The remains of 39 Iguanodon were found in a single site in Belgium, where a whole herd appears to have perished. Unusually, many of these skeletons are complete.

Picture credit: google