Everyone loved dinosaurs as a child, and almost everyone loved Jurassic Park. But not many people know that almost everything that mass culture tells us about dinosaurs is not true.
Here we have already washed the bones of the dinosaurs of the JURSK PERIOD, but still, for sure there are still many questions in which we continue to believe in works of art.
In this collection you can read the most popular misconceptions about dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs were the largest creatures that ever existed on earth
First, not all dinosaurs were big. Of course, some of them reached quite serious proportions. But these were isolated species. In addition to these, there were many less impressive dinosaurs, the size of a sheep, a dog or a chicken, for example. The smallest dinosaur known to science even weighed about 200 grams. Secondly: you will be surprised, but the largest animal that ever existed on Earth is our contemporary - this is the blue whale. So if you were upset that you would never be able to see a living megaladon, you have every chance of seeing a much larger giant alive.
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All dinosaurs lived in the tropics
This myth stems from the fact that the climate used to be much warmer than it is now. And based on this, some seriously believe that almost the entire land was then covered with dense tropical forests. In fact, of course, this is not the case. At the time of the existence of dinosaurs, however, as now, on Earth there were already deserts, and plains, and ordinary forests, and jungles, of course. Moreover, over the millions of years that dinosaurs walked our planet, the landscape, like the climate, has invariably changed. And dinosaurs have successfully mastered the entire spectrum of ecosystems.
Dinosaurs were dumb creatures with tiny brains
To judge the intelligence of creatures that lived 100 million years ago, from which only petrified remains have survived, is an extremely thankless task. The only thing we can know more or less precisely is the size of their brains. And, naturally, it was different for all dinosaurs, both in absolute value and in relation to body size. The same stegosaurus, often ridiculed for its tiny brain, actually had a brain the size of a walnut and weighing about 70 grams. On the other hand, our beloved four-legged friends, dogs, have brains of about the same size. But dogs weigh a maximum of 100 kilograms, which is 20 times less than a stegosaurus weighed. But the brain of a tyrannosaur, for example, was three times larger than the brain of a dolphin. But in terms of body size, it roughly corresponds to the brain of modern reptiles.
The Jurassic is the "golden age" of the dinosaurs
Well, firstly: the greatest diversification of dinosaur species, according to statistical studies, was not in the Jurassic, but in the Late Cretaceous period. And secondly: even this obvious diversity is nothing more than an illusion, since it is the rocks of the Late Cretaceous period that have been studied to a greater extent today than the rocks of the other periods of the Mesozoic era. So while it is impossible to say with complete certainty when there were more dinosaurs.
Tyrannosaurus Rex is the largest predator ever to walk on earth
And again, a myth to which we are completely indebted to popular culture. The tyrannosaurus turned out to be so often mentioned that it practically turned into the personification of the brand of all dinosaurs in general. It's just that when the word "dinosaur" is used, the majority will imagine either a tyrannosaur or a triceratops in their heads. So it is the tyrannosaurus that is often called the largest and most dangerous of all land predators known to science. We will return to its danger later, but for now let's talk about the size. Today it is already known for certain that the tyrannosaurus was not the largest land predator in history.
The largest skeleton found is 12.3 meters long. While the spinosaurus reached 16 meters in length. But these two giants have never met, since the tyrannosaurus is "younger" than its competitor by more than 30 million years. And, of course, all these years evolution has not stood still, so in many respects the Tyrannosaurus looks like a much more perfect "killing machine" than its more ancient brother.
Dinosaurs were a dead end branch of evolution
The fact that they did not build cities and did not start wars for resources does not mean that they were a dead-end branch of evolution. The dinosaurs were perfectly integrated into the then environment. They were the dominant species on the planet and, in fact, the masters of not only the earth, but also the air and the sea. Although objectively speaking, neither marine reptiles nor flying lizards can be called dinosaurs, but nevertheless, they were much more relatives than us and dolphins, for example. And yet. People have been evolving for only two million years and have already come close to global crises and the threat of total destruction of themselves. While dinosaurs perfectly evolved over 135 million years, and if it were not for global cataclysms beyond their control, they might have continued to live to this day.
At the time when dinosaurs lived, all mammals were about the size of a mouse
No, even then there were much larger representatives of the order of mammals. Here, however, it is worth immediately making a reservation: depending on what is considered a large size. Of course, if we talk about the size of a mammoth, then there were no such mammals in the days of dinosaurs. In general, the average size of mammals then did not exceed the size of a modern cat. However, even then, namely about 125-122 million years ago, there were already such mammals as repenome, for example. It was about 1 meter long, weighed 12-14 kg and judging by the remains found, it even ate some small dinosaurs.
All dinosaurs lived only in the equatorial region of the earth, and the finds of their remains in temperate latitudes are explained by the movement of continents
And again no. Yes, over the millions of years that dinosaurs have existed, not only the climate has changed, but also the landscape of the earth. But many modern finds prove that dinosaurs even lived in Antarctica. For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that at that time Australia and New Zealand were connected to Antarctica, forming one polar continent. The climate in those days was naturally much warmer than today, but the dinosaurs living there still had to adapt to the harsh weather conditions. In summer, the sun shone on this continent all day long, and for five months of the year the polar night reigned. It is possible that predators and herbivorous dinosaurs were in these areas in summer, and in winter they migrated to warmer regions to the north.
Dinosaurs became extinct as a result of a meteorite fall
Contrary to the assurances of many people that this is exactly what happened, this is just one version of what happened. Scientific debate about what caused the death of the dinosaurs, whether their extinction was sudden or gradual, continues to this day; there is no single point of view. It is known for certain that the extinction of the dinosaurs was only part of the so-called "great extinction" that took place at the same time. Along with the dinosaurs, marine reptiles, flying lizards, many mollusks and a huge number of small algae died out. In total, 16% of families of marine animals and 18% of families of terrestrial vertebrates died. According to one of the widespread theories, the death of dinosaurs could have occurred due to a supernova explosion relatively close to our solar system. Such an event could unleash a deadly shower of gamma rays on Earth,and the X-ray radiation ejected by the explosion could sweep away part of the earth's atmosphere, forming a hot layer at an altitude of 20-80 km above the planet's surface.
Velociraptors could reach speeds of up to 100 km / h
In general, the real image of the Velociraptor, which scientists managed to reconstruct, is extremely far from what was shown to us in the Jurassic Park franchise. This is largely due to the fact that when working on the film, the basis was the reconstruction of another dinosaur - Deinonychus, which was previously considered to be a Velociraptor genus. But even the Deinonychus in the film is doubled in size compared to their actual size. As for true velociraptors, evolutionarily they were closer to birds, had plumage, were warm-blooded animals, reached a height of 60-70 cm and weighed about 20 kg. At the moment, there is no scientific justification to think that velociraptors could run very quickly, hunted in packs (all of their found remains are separate individuals), and even more so, had some kind of super-developed intelligence. All this is nothing more than fiction.