The first dinosaur discovery In the mid-1600s, a fossil bone was acquired by Dr Robert Plot, the first keeper of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum. He noted that it looked almost exactly like the lower part of a human femur.
Megalosaurus is believed to be the first dinosaur ever described scientifically. British fossil hunter William Buckland found some fossils in 1819, and he eventually described them and named them in 1824.
The first dinosaur fossils were recognized in the early 19th century, with the name "dinosaur" (meaning "terrible lizard") being coined by Sir Richard Owen in 1842 to refer to these "great fossil lizards".
In 1841, Richard Owen, the first director of London's Natural History Museum, gave the name dinosaurs to these giant prehistoric reptiles. The word dinosaur is from the Greek deinos (terrible) and sauros (lizard).
For approximately 120 million years—from the Carboniferous to the middle Triassic periods—terrestrial life was dominated by the pelycosaurs, archosaurs, and therapsids (the so-called "mammal-like reptiles") that preceded the dinosaurs.
There are later descriptions of creatures in the Bible that could be referring to dinosaurs. One example is the behemoth of Job 40:15-19. Even in fairly modern history there are reports of creatures which seem to fit the description of dinosaurs.
Evidence suggests an asteroid impact was the main culprit. Volcanic eruptions that caused large-scale climate change may also have been involved, together with more gradual changes to Earth's climate that happened over millions of years.
Named Nyasasaurus parringtoni, the roughly 243-million-year-old fossils represent either the oldest known dinosaur or the closest known relative to the earliest dinosaurs.
The results of this study, which were based on estimated real global biodiversity, showed that between 628 and 1,078 non-avian dinosaur species were alive at the end of the Cretaceous and underwent sudden extinction after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
He and all of the other researchers, however, suspect that more recent dinosaurs even closer to the K-T boundary will be found in the future. For now, however, the 65-million-year-old Triceratops is the world's last known surviving dinosaur.
Bizarre 500-toothed dinosaur
Nigersaurus, you might remember, we named for bones collected on the last expedition here three years ago. This sauropod (long-necked dinosaur) has an unusual skull containing as many as 500 slender teeth.
Hadrosaurus lived about 80 million years ago late in the Cretaceous Period. Hadrosaurus is a famous dinosaur because it was the most complete dinosaur skeleton unearthed anywhere in the world when it was discovered and scientifically documented in 1858.
After the dinosaurs died out, nearly 65 million years passed before people appeared on Earth. However, small mammals (including shrew-sized primates) were alive at the time of the dinosaurs.
The last non-bird dinosaurs were living at a time of environmental change, some of which began millions of years before they went extinct. The asteroid was the final, killer blow.
Not all dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Avian dinosaurs–in other words, birds–survived and flourished. Museum scientists estimate that there are more than 18,000 bird species alive today. A variety of other species also survived on land, including frogs, snakes, lizards and mammals.
Crocodiles are not dinosaurs, but both crocodiles and dinosaurs came from the crown group Archosaurs. Archosaurs were reptiles that included birds, crocodiles, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs. Modern-day birds are descendants of feathered dinosaurs, evolving over the last 65 million years.
Jellyfish have been around for more than 500 million years. That means they appeared more than 250 million years before the first dinosaurs.
Birds, the only known living dinosaurs. Living fossils, extant taxa that closely resemble organisms otherwise known only from the fossil record. Paleocene dinosaurs, non-avian dinosaurs alleged to have survived into the beginning of the Paleocene epoch.
Other than birds, however, there is no scientific evidence that any dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus, or Triceratops, are still alive. These, and all other non-avian dinosaurs became extinct at least 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
rex - a six-ton powerhouse of muscle and teeth and the most famous killer the world has ever known. Its jaws were packed with over 50 teeth, each up to a foot long, and powerful enough to crush a car.
Dinosaurs arose from small dinosauromorph ancestors in the Triassic period, when the climate was harsh and dry. They faced "competition from the croc-line archosaurs for tens of millions of years, [but] finally prevailed when Pangaea began to split," Brusatte told Live Science.
Christians who believe in a 'young' earth may argue that either dinosaurs never existed, or that they lived here much more recently and fossil dating is unreliable. However, many Christians think the Bible does fit with a much older earth.
Genesis 1–2 tells the story of God's creation of the world. On the first day, God created light in the darkness. On the second, He created the sky. Dry land and plants were created on the third day.
Dinosaurs lived on all of the continents. At the beginning of the age of dinosaurs (during the Triassic Period, about 230 million years ago), the continents were arranged together as a single supercontinent called Pangea. During the 165 million years of dinosaur existence this supercontinent slowly broke apart.
The First Humans
One of the earliest known humans is Homo habilis, or “handy man,” who lived about 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa.