What really is dinasour?

Question

What really is dinasour?

Answer 1

Dinosaur is used to describe most of the large animals that existed during the Mesozoic era (248 million yrs ago to 65 million yrs ago.)  The Mesozoic era is broken into 3 periods, Triassic (248 to 206 MYA), Jurassic 206 to 144 MYA)  & Creaceous (144 to 65 MYA). Recently we've determined birds to be descended from the Dinosaurs & even found fossilized feathered dinosaurs. DNA from the leg bone of the T. Rex indicates the common chicken is somewhat related to them.

Not having DNA from all dinosaurs, it is impossible to determine which existing animals they were most closely related to... some appear to have been closely related to amphipians, others to reptiles.  Mammals appeared ~100 million yrs ago & some survived the mass extinction, at least partially caused by an astroid strike ~65 million yrs ago. Because birds & Crocs exist, some dinosaurs survived too.

Answer 2

From the first link below, summing it up better than I could:

"• Not everything big and dead is a dinosaur. All too often, books written (or movies made) for a popular audience include animals such as mammoths, mastodons, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and the sail-backed Dimetrodon. Dinosaurs are a specific subgroup of the archosaurs, a group that also includes crocodiles, pterosaurs, and birds. although pterosaurs are close relations, they are not true dinosaurs. Even more distantly related to dinosaurs are the marine reptiles, which include the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. Mammoths and mastodons are mammals and did not appear until many millions of years after the close of the Cretaceous period. Dimetrodon is neither a reptile nor a mammal, but a basal synapsid, i.e., an early relative of the ancestors of mammals."

Additionally, you'll find a lot more information by checking the other links below.  Enjoy!

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Answer 3

Large reptile.  

Before the flood everything lived ten times longer. Reptile keep growing as long as they live.

Answer 4

Those that suggest it is a reptile may be technically correct but they are not including that it should not be classified with lizards, snakes, and turtles.  It is in fact much closer to birds.  They grew very fast and were undoubtedly warm blooded as are birds.  They were superior to mammals in that their musculature and respiratory system were much more efficient.  This allowed them to grow to great size.  Since all we have to work on are bones, much of what I said should be taken as theory but it is far more likely to be true than not.  Birds should be classified as dinosaurs.  In fact, they sometimes are.  So next time for Thanksgiving, you will probably be eating a 20 pound dinosaur we like to call turkeys.

Answer 5

Any of numerous extinct terrestrial reptiles of the Mesozoic era..

get more details:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur#Wh...

Answer 6

In simple words, they were big, very big animals lived and died many million years ago. Precisely  they lived from 200 million years ago and all of them dead by 65 millions years ago! We have only their bones available from earth. By uniting the bones correctly, we could understand their size. By scientific study of the bones, we have understood their life, habits and also their death! By our knowledge on the geography of Earth we have found a huge calamity on Earth that has destroyed all the plant life leading to ultimately to their extinction!