Analysis of a Timeline of Dinosaur History

In this paper, I will break down a timeline of dinosaur history starting with when scientists first start studying them and ending with why dinosaurs died out and anything in between it as well. I will also demonstrate a fun fact of why scientists believe they can recreate living dinosaurs within five to ten years.

In ancient history, scientists believed dinosaurs roamed the earth way before humans ever did. Fossils have been found all across the globe proving these statements. They also believed that based on geological evidence, a giant meteor struck this earth, which might have been the cause of their extinction.

Researchers initially started considering dinosaurs during the 1800s, when they found the bones of a huge land reptile they named a Megalosaurus. Sir Richard Owen, a Britain scientist, first came up with the expression 'dinosaur' and from there word stuck. Scientists discovered dinosaur fossils all around the globe and continued to study them until they eventually found all different types of dinosaurs. “From there, dinosaurs have been broken down into numerous genera and each genus into one or more species”. During this time, dinosaurs would stick together and would stay near each other in one landmass known as Pangaea. Of course, once Pangaea broke up, they started spreading throughout the globe which explains the fact that fossils are found all around. When it came to America, the first fossil that was found in U.S. soil was in the 18th century and it was a thigh bone. “The first dinosaur fossil found in the US was a thigh bone found by Dr. Caspar Wistar, in Gloucester County, New Jersey, in 1787 (it has since been lost, but more fossils were later found in the area)”. After the first finding of this fossil, they soon began to find more fossils in the United States in the eighteen hundredths. Also, in the 1800’s, Dr. Moody found a one-foot long footprint of a hadrosaur which was also found in the United States. “In 1800 in Massachusetts, USA, Pliny Moody found 1-foot (31 cm) long fossilized footprints at his farm that were thought by Harvard and Yale scholars to be from ‘Noah’s Raven'’”. Since then, many fossils were found in New England, but scientists never gave much attention to them since it wasn’t as important to them as the first one was. The oldest dinosaur was Saltopus, which was a small carnivore that lived 245 million years ago. Since these dinosaur fossils have only been found in Scotland, the UK holds the key to having the origin of dinosaurs.

According to scientists, the type of dinosaurs that ever walked first on this Earth were what they called “Labrador-sized” dinosaurs. Those were dinosaurs who were the size of a Labrador retriever and they kept that name for a while until they decided to finally give them the name of Nyasasaurus Parringtoni. “It would probably have stood upright and lived by Lake Nyasa in Tanzania feeding on vegetation. Although it was the size of a dog, it had a five foot long tail. Figure one shows a picture of approximately how the dinosaur would look like”. Scientist also came up with the idea that they looked like a Labrador because of the fossils that they found, which was its upper arm and six vertebrae. It was believed that dinosaurs evolved from other existing reptiles that were already roaming the earth. “Dinosaurs evolved from other reptiles during the Triassic period, over 230 million years ago. Dinosaurs evolved soon after the Permian extinction, which was the biggest mass extinction that ever occurred on Earth” (Dinosaur Fossil). During the Triassic period, other mammals were also evolving, for example, birds. Dinosaurs and birds originated from an area that is now known as South America but before when the continents were all collided together. Here is a timeline of what dinosaurs roamed the world and in what era, it also includes other mammals that roamed the earth. During the time that the continents were arranged together as a single supercontinent also known as Pangea, Dinosaurs would stay close but once it broke apart they slowly started spreading across the globe. Dinosaurs lived for quite a while in this earth before they got extinct. They lived in a time known as Mesozoic Era. This was a million years ago, way before humans and Homo sapiens stepped foot on this globe. It has been known that there have been about 700 different dinosaurs’ species. Scientists believe that there could have been a lot more than 700. One research suggested that there could have been up to 1,000 different species. “The numbers will continue to fluctuate. Many of these different species were actually assigned separate names based on scanty fossil evidence, sometimes only a tooth or vertebra” (Taylor, 2016). Every year there is always a new finding of fossils, so it is a little difficult to detect an exact number of how many species of dinosaurs actually roamed the earth at some point but that is an approximate number of what scientists believe. It is also hard to detect how many different species there are because sometimes when scientists find fossils, they think it’s a new species that they haven’t studied but once they go more into depth with it they realize that it is actually a species that they have previously studied. “When skeletons are compared more closely, we sometimes find that animals previously classified into two or three different species are actually one species” (Taylor, 2016). A lot of it has to do with the difference in skeletal details and difference between sexes, age, or disease among individuals. Lastly, the way dinosaurs would eat and maintain themselves would be by simply eating their greens as far as leaf’s, and plants. Grass at this time was not fully developed so they were not able to eat that. Some would eat lizards, turtles, eggs, or early mammals but the majority of the dinosaurs would eat their greens.

By now, everyone knows why dinosaurs died out or at least have an idea of how it happened. It is believed that during the dinosaur era, an asteroid, comet, or meteor the size of two football fields impacted the earth so hard that nearly destroyed the majority of what was on earth. This event is known as the cretaceous-tertiary extinction or K-T. “For many years, paleontologists believed this event was caused by climate and geological changes that interrupted the dinosaurs’ food supply”. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that scientists discovered that theory fell and landed on the idea that it was a comet. Of course, these are many theories because there is no proof of it. Scientists say that if a comet was the cause of the extinction then there would have been evidence on the surface of earth with radiation dating back to that era. “In 1956, Russian astronomer Joseph Shklovsky became the first scientist to consider the extinction was due to a single catastrophic event when he theorized that a supernova showered the earth in radiation that could have killed the dinosaurs”. Of course, in the 1950 that theory was only being considered since there weren't enough resources then to be able to prove it. Once the asteroid hit, it took out the majority of the dinosaur species but not all. Dino-Era birds were actually able to survive the asteroid that wiped out three quarters of life on Earth. “The only birds that survived were ground-dwellers, including ancient relatives of ducks, chickens, and ostriches. Those that survived, eventually evolved into the modern birds we are familiar with today. There are 11 living creatures that coexisted with dinosaurs which are crocodiles, snakes, bees, sharks, horseshoe crabs, sea stars, lobsters, duck-billed platypuses, green sea turtles, tuatara, and cockroaches. As mentioned before, when the asteroid hit, it wiped out three quarters of life on earth except for these creatures.

Something that has come up recently in the year of 2018 is scientists believe they could recreate living dinosaurs within five to ten years. They believe the answer lies with chickens because they claim that all they need to do is reverse engineer them by taking them back into their prehistoric roots. “Dr. Horner said there are four major differences between dinosaurs and birds: their tails, arms, hands, and mouths. He and his team have already manipulated certain genetics in chicken embryos to successfully reverse-engineer the bird’s beak into a velociraptor-like snout”. They actually claim that the wings and hands shouldn’t be too hard to develop as well. The only thing that would take up five to ten years is the fact that they have to reverse-engineer the chickens which can take some time to perfect it. Also, they state that the tail would also be a big project and would take some time to develop but they are very confident at the fact that they can soon recreate dinosaurs. At the beginning, paleontologists believed they could have recreated dinosaurs by simply taking some DNA from fossils they have found. However, over the years, they realized that DNA doesn’t last for a long time and it slowly starts to fade away especially since the fossils have been around for millions of years. Soon after, they came up with the idea that they can use chickens and birds since birds are in fact considered in the family tree. The way they would use birds would be with the intention of keeping them as birds but tweak them up in a manner that makes them look like dinosaurs. “The first step of this scheme is to start with a modern descendant of the dinosaur. That is the easy part, as birds and alligators are the evolutionary descendants of the theropod, the category of two-legged dinosaur that includes the T-Rex''. They also believe that they can develop a dinosaur by simply taking an embryo of a bird, which is the same way scientists will do it with chickens. Lastly, another style that they can possibly try to bring back dinosaurs is by cloning them. Paleontologists believe that by simply taking a swab of DNA from a fossil and taking it to the lab and starting the cloning process. At first, they were confident with the idea because cloning has been done before on mammals, but they soon realized that it would have been difficult with dinosaurs since they are very big mammals to keep in a lab.

Throughout the years, there have been many myths and theories of dinosaurs even though they lived 65 million years ago and the way they became extinct by an asteroid but the important factor here to remember is that they did in fact exist at some point and did roam the earth. If dinosaurs didn’t exist, then there wouldn’t be any evidence that they did exist as far fossils. Fossils are the key factor of people believing that dinosaurs at some point roamed this earth way before humans ever did and as long as scientists keep finding fossils whether if it’s in the UK or in the United States, they will continue to believe. Paleontologists are impressed with how far they have become with any findings they have done throughout the years since when they first started studying dinosaurs up until now. It is impressive to think that scientists can recreate dinosaurs within five to ten years. The thought of it seems and sounds crazy but they are very confident with the idea especially since they have chickens and birds to be able to do the testing and finally back up their project.