Mysteries of dinosaurs that have not yet been solved by scientists (16 photos). Interesting things on the web

Lesson objectives:

Educational: to form an idea among students about the life of dinosaurs
on Earth in the Mesozoic era, the ability to establish relationships
in nature.
Educational: develop students' imagination and observation, thinking
and cognitive activity.
Educational: to cultivate interest in studying the history of planet Earth, its
nature.

Equipment: illustrations depicting dinosaurs, multimedia projector, film “Dinosaurs” (Shoval Film Production, 1997).

Lesson progress

1. Class organization. Lesson topic message.

Lesson topic: “Planet of mysteries. Once upon a time there were dinosaurs"

Today we have an unusual lesson. It is based on material from excursions to the Darwin Museum, the Museum of Paleontology and the Museum of Geosciences, based on reports from students in our class and excerpts from science and science fiction films. This should help you understand the topic better.

2. Repetition of what has been covered.

Let’s repeat the theme “Continent Travelers”.

Name and show on the map the continents of our planet known to you.
How many are there?

There are six of them. These are Eurasia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, North America and South America.

Teacher: - What, according to scientists, was our planet in the past, 200 million years ago?
Children: - The entire landmass was one giant supercontinent. Scientists call it Pangea.
Teacher: - What happened then?
Children: - It split into several parts, which gradually began to float further away from each other.
Teacher: - Approximately how fast were they moving?
Children: - 1.5 – 2 cm per year.
Teacher: - What will happen to the Earth in the distant future?
Children: - According to scientists, the continents will again unite into one, and South America will turn into a huge island.

3. Explanation of new material.

According to scientists, the Universe arose 14 billion years ago, and the Earth and the planets of the solar system - just over 4 billion years ago. Scientists have divided the history of the Earth and life on it into certain intervals - eras, which are divided into periods.

Archean era(3500 million years ago) is the era of hidden life, it indicates the existence of bacteria and blue-green algae, which did not appear immediately.

Palaeozoic(350 million years) – the era of marine invertebrates and fish.

Mesozoic era(150 million years) – the era of dinosaurs.

Cenozoic era(65 million years) – the time of animals, (2 million years) – the time of man.

Dinosaurs lived only in the Mesozoic era (225–65 million years ago). They reached an amazing peak and quickly died out.

Watch a clip from the movie Dinosaurs.
One boy had a dream that he met Professor Richard Owen at the London Natural History Museum. The professor tells him about the origin of life on Earth.

(Watching a movie – 3 min.)

Teacher: - Why has not a single person in the world seen real dinosaurs?
Children: - 65 million years have passed since the disappearance of dinosaurs.

Some people say that dinosaurs inhabited the Earth when it was "young". This is not entirely true. If you imagine the entire multimillion-year history of the Earth as one day, then dinosaurs lived on it for less than an hour. And the history of human civilization could fit into half a second. Dinosaurs belonged to the class of reptiles, or reptiles.

Teacher: - What modern reptiles do you know?
Children: - Lizards, snakes, turtles and crocodiles. Reptiles are a class of vertebrate animals that move primarily by crawling, or dragging their bellies along the ground.
Teacher: - How did dinosaurs differ from other reptiles?
Children: - They were land animals and walked on straight legs.
Teacher: - How did people learn about the existence of dinosaurs?
Children: - We carried out excavations.
Teacher: - What is the name of the science that studies extinct animals?
Children: - Paleontology.

In 1822, fossilized bones of a large lizard were found for the first time. Its teeth were shaped like those of iguanas, lizards found in Central and South America. Therefore, the discovered animal was called iguanodon (iguana tooth). London professor Richard Owen first came to the conclusion that these animals belong to an independent species of reptiles, and he proposed calling them dinosaurs- terrible or terribly large lizards.

And in 1854, the largest scientists in England received an invitation to dinner, which was to take place in the belly of a dinosaur. In fact, the banquet table was set inside a model of a giant monster that had just been discovered at that time. The model was made in full size. Iguanodon is the name of this lizard. He stood on four legs, and his belly almost touched the ground. 155 years have passed. Scientists have found thousands of dinosaur skeletons, and today no one will put the Iguanodon on four legs, because the animal walked on two legs. In general, dinosaurs were distinguished from other lizards by walking on two legs; over time, some of them stood on 4 legs.

Teacher: - The remains of dinosaurs are found on all continents. Why? Did they really swim across the ocean?
Children: - This was not necessary. At that time, the continents were shifted and formed a single whole.

Why do dinosaurs have such strange names?

From two ancient languages ​​- Latin and Greek. Usually the names denoted some characteristic of this animal: Megalosaurus - a large lizard, Deinonychus - a terrible claw, Triceratops - a three-horned muzzle, Stegosaurus - a lizard under a roof. There are over 500 different species of dinosaurs known.

Scientists divide dinosaurs into the following groups:

4. Student reports.

Tyrannosaurus

Tyrannosaurus- the largest predator that has ever inhabited our planet. His remains were first found in 1902 in Asia and western North America. Tyrannosaurus means "tyrant lizard". He lived at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 80 million years ago. This huge 15-meter giant weighed more than 8 tons. One of his skulls was one and a half meters long. Sharp, shark-like teeth protruded from its wide-open mouth. Tyrannosaurus walked on powerful hind legs. His front paws were short, weak and had only two toes. The huge head and short body were balanced by a long and thick tail. There is an opinion that the ferocious tyrannosaurs ate mainly carrion, because. they did not run very fast and could not pursue the prey. With their terrible appearance, they probably scared other predators away from their prey. But recently, many scientists believe that the Tyrannosaurus rex was a formidable hunter-killer. He ran fast enough (40 km/h), overtook his victim and killed her. But again, this is a hypothesis!

Diplodocus

Diplodocus– one of the true giants of the Late Jurassic period . The first fossilized skeleton was found in 1877 in the Rocky Mountains (Colorado). Diplodocus reached a length of 30 meters. Of these, most were on the neck and tail. His bones were hollow, so he weighed little - about 10 tons. Paleontologists called this dinosaur Diplodocus because at the end of its back, in the sacral region, it had a second brain. By the way, the brain of a diplodocus weighed less than that of a kitten. Diplodocus probably led a gregarious lifestyle, feeding on the leaves of low trees. Not being able to chew, they swallowed stones that helped them grind their food. Diplodocus wandered through the swamps all day, basked in the warm water and ate, ate endlessly. The long tail of Diplodocus, ending in a thin “whip,” served as an excellent weapon of defense.

Triceratops.

Triceratops- appeared at the end of the era of dinosaurs, about 70 million years ago. Lived in North America. Triceratops was a real giant: about 10 m long, 3 m high, and weighed 11 tons. He walked on four powerful, column-like legs. Triceratops means "three-horned face." The animal must have used these long horns as weapons. The neck of the Triceratops was protected by a huge bony frill. Despite its menacing appearance, Triceratops was a peaceful animal. He ate plants. Triceratops led a gregarious lifestyle. Even huge, hungry tyrannosaurs were careful not to attack an adult male Triceratops, much less an entire herd.

Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus- a scaly lizard covered with plates. It is “the strangest animal”, according to British zoologist Richard Owen. His remains were first found in the USA in 1877. Stegosaurus was a quadruped and herbivore. About 10 meters long and weighed no more than 2 tons. It had a tiny head and a brain the size of a walnut. At the end of the tail there were two pairs of spikes resembling horns. They helped the stegosaurus defend itself from predators. The most amazing thing about this creature was the row of large bony plates that ran down the back. Perhaps they served the stegosaurus for protection from predators. Or maybe they helped control the dinosaur’s body temperature. They helped cool the body, which was important in the unusually hot climate of the Earth.
(You can offer children other topics of reports, for example, “Saurolophus”, “Pterodactyl”, “Euoplocephalus”, “Deinonychus” and others).

5. Reasons for the extinction of dinosaurs.

What are the reasons for the extinction of dinosaurs? There are about a hundred of them.

The most common versions:

a) A large object from outer space, possibly a comet or meteorite, crashed into the Earth. The atmosphere was filled with so much dust, gas and earth rocks that the sun's rays could not reach the surface of the Earth. Plants died. Following them were herbivores, and then predators.
b) Another theory also believed that the sun's rays did not reach our planet due to a series of giant volcanic eruptions. Volcanoes released tons of dust and gas into the atmosphere. And again, neither herbivores nor carnivores managed to escape.

6. Did dinosaurs have descendants?

Birds- the only true descendants of dinosaurs. Many elements of the structure of their body and egg convincingly indicate that their ancestors were small predatory dinosaurs. The reason for the survival of birds is that they could regulate their body temperature even in difficult climatic conditions - primarily thanks to their plumage. The ostrich bears a striking resemblance to the ostrich dinosaur, and the Californian running cuckoo bears a striking resemblance to the small predatory dinosaur Compsognathus.

7. Is it possible that dinosaurs still survived to this day in some secluded corner of the Earth?

From time to time, similar rumors and legends appear.

Textbook (p. 180). Article “Loch Ness Monster” (reading).

Although such rumors and legends appear from time to time, not a single serious scientist admits the idea that even the smallest dinosaur could remain undetected anywhere to this day. However, the direct descendants of dinosaurs, birds, in fact, still live among us.

8. Lesson summary.

Sci-fi movie about dinosaurs (3 minutes).

What dinosaurs did you recognize in the film? (Triceratops, Brachiosaurus, Stegosaurus).
- Guys! Did you like our lesson? How? Well done! Thanks for the lesson.

List of literature for the lesson:

1. The illustrated encyclopedia of dinosaurs.
2. Great encyclopedia of dinosaurs.
3. Children's Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs.
4. "Dinosaurs". Series "What is what".
5. Textbook for grade 4 “Familiarization with the world around us”

Congratulations to all female accomplices on March 8th! I wish you never become completely read!
The text is not about bouquets - but there are some)

I've been meaning to write about dinosaurs for a long time. The question is why, well, why do these hefty, lizard-like, cold, huge creatures attract children so much that they are ready to go to museums to look at them, read books and collect their figurines. But I became really interested in the subject after my daughter forced me to read to her three times from cover to cover the most boring (and, in my opinion, either fraudulent or very poorly translated) dinosaur reference book. This small paperback book with poor illustrations has become one of our most read books.
Perhaps the only advantage I found in it was that it forced me to immediately doubt all the scraps of knowledge about dinosaurs I had previously received.

What precipitated the child’s interest in this dinosaur reference book.
1. We went as often as our wallet allowed to visit the Dinosauria amusement park. There, the daughter gently stroked the huge rubber moving figures of dinosaurs, and when they sang, opening their toothy mouths, she sang along and danced along with them.

2. We watched the series “The Land Before Time” about the dinosaur Little Foot (or, in another translation, “Little Feet”) several dozen times.

3. We have a colony of plastic and rubber dinosaurs of all breeds of such length that if the dinosaurs were lined up, the line of them would stretch throughout the entire children's room.

4. My favorite game was digging up dinosaur skeletons.

And then my grandmother bought us this reference book on the train. In a small format, in an extremely poor quality binding, which crumbled into pages after the second reading, the directory consists of descriptions of 140 species of dinosaurs according to the parameters: “weight-height-habitat – geography of distribution – features” on half a page + images for them. I still don't understand what made my child return again and again to the main information in the reference book - the height and weight of dinosaurs. We tried to measure the weight of the presented dinosaurs in cars, and the volume in buses. We were thinking about which dinosaur would fit in our room, which one could only run outside, and which floor windows it could look into.

Their complex names (as I assume, tracings from the Latin names) - for example, Eudiomorphodon, Stenopterygium and, especially, Afrovenator, put me into a stupor, and my daughter memorized them and then trained my memory, asking again and again how much Achelousaurus weighs (35 tons), how long he is (12 meters) and where he lived (in what is now the United States). From some, horned and scary raptors and ceratopsians, she was touched: “Look, what a cutie!”

The riddle of the “Dinosaurs” reference book made me think that, it seems, the whole science of dinosaurs is some kind of mega-hypothesis, and the drawings compiled on the basis of the found remains of skeletons are the imagination of artists, accepted as an axiom due to the age of the first version images of tyrannosaurs, stegosaurs and triceratops.

But the child must be told the truth. Without in any way trying (and not having the competence) to argue with science (with which they argue all the time - for example, adherents of the biblical theory of the origin of the world), I wanted to clarify whether everything in this reference book is generally justified.

In particular, I was interested in tiny dinosaurs - for example, Anurognathus, according to the authors of the reference book of the Vilnius publishing house BESTIARY, weighed 3-10 grams, was 3-9 cm long, and had a wingspan of 50 cm. I couldn’t imagine a viable flying structure with such parameters, which seemed to be something like a blood-sucking flying piranha for large dinosaurs.
Something like this:

In general, it turned out that on the topic of dinosaurs, if you start digging, there are more questions than answers. For example, one theory says: “The most unacceptable thing about dinosaur work is the dating. It is surprising how confidently it is stated that they began to exist 220 - 230 million years ago, their heyday was 160 million years ago, and they disappeared 65 million years ago. All this is fantasy. This is refuted by data from a relatively young scientific discipline - molecular paleontology. In Montana in 1990, the remains of a tyrannosaurus were found. It was studied by a team led by University of North Carolina lead researcher Mary Schweitzer. Tyrannosaurus rex bones were not fossilized. They contained blood cells. This clearly proves that the dinosaur did not live “65 million years ago,” but only a few thousand years ago.”
Here are a few more refutations of traditional ideas about dinosaurs:

“It’s surprising that some stereotypes about dinosaurs have lingered in the public consciousness for many decades. Let's look at the main of these misconceptions.
Dinosaurs were big
Of course, some dinosaurs reached truly colossal sizes, and some of them were many times larger than modern animals. However, at the same time there lived many less grandiose species, the size of a cow, sheep or chicken. The smallest dinosaur known to science weighed about 200 grams as an adult. (So ​​our directory is lying?)
They were stupid
It's doubtful that most dinosaurs were intelligent, but people seem to think all ancient dinosaurs were dumb as a log. Most likely, this attitude is due to the failure that befell dinosaurs during evolution.
It is quite difficult to measure intelligence even in living species, let alone species that have disappeared. However, we do have evidence of dinosaur social behavior, parental care, and group interactions. This is not enough to recognize them as intellectual titans, but it is quite enough to stop considering them complete fools.
They were slow (or vice versa, super fast)
The old idea that dinosaurs were very slow has not yet died out. But these animals were not just giant lizards that suffocated after the first step, but quite mobile and active animals. At the same time, the Veloceraptor shown in Jurassic Park, running at a speed of about 100 kilometers per hour, was a clear and gross exaggeration.
Dinosaurs dragged their tails along the ground
This stereotype arose back in the days when dinosaurs were considered simply huge lizards, and has successfully survived to this day. The anatomy of dinosaur bones and muscles suggests that nothing like this ever happened, but the main killers of the “tail stereotype” were the many tracks of different dinosaurs that showed no signs of a dragging tail.
Sauropods lived in water or swamps
This hypothesis does not have a long life in science, but it has somehow captured the public consciousness. People are sure that giant sauropods were too heavy to walk on land, but they are not aware that they would simply float up if they got into the water. There are also many traces of large sauropods left in completely terrestrial environments.
Tyrannosaurs were scavengers
The idea, attributed to Jack Horner, never gained widespread support among paleontologists (and Horner himself did not seem to be too keen on it). It was easily refuted by a number of studies, but for some reason people stubbornly cling to it to this day.
All dinosaurs lived in the tropics
In general, the Mesozoic era was warmer than modern times. But over the course of tens of millions of years, dinosaurs mastered a wide range of ecosystems - deserts, plains, steppes, coasts, forests, jungles and even high latitudes. So they inhabited not only the wet jungle.
Stegosaurus had two brains
He didn't have two brains. At the base of the dinosaurs' spine there was an expanded nerve ganglion - like many modern animals and even humans.
It’s incredible that theories disproved a century ago are still being actively circulated.”
Dave Hohn, a researcher at the University of Bristol and an expert on dinosaurs and pterosaurs.
Based on the Guardian

And so I thought, what if dinosaurs for children are just another type of mythology: about ancient huge lizards? What difference does it make, after all, what they really looked like?

Dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, but we think we know everything about them. Feature and popular science films, numerous encyclopedias of dinosaurs for the youngest and for adults... Meanwhile, not everyone realizes: the main part of what we know about dinosaurs is just an invention of writers and directors. In fact, many pressing questions about them still remain unanswered.

Which dinosaur came first?

Scientists know more than 300 species of dinosaurs. They also know that dinosaurs appeared on the planet about 230 million years ago. But which one was the first is still a mystery. In the 1930s, it seemed that the answer to this question was close. Then paleontologists discovered the remains of a dinosaur in Tanzania, named, after the place of discovery and the name of the discoverer, Parrington's Nyasasaurus. Scientists claimed that their age is 240 million years. However, a problem soon arose: scientists could not say with certainty that we were talking about a dinosaur, and not about one of its close relatives. The size of the creature was about 2-3 meters, its bony crest resembled the crests of dinosaurs - that’s all that is known about Nyasasaurus. Perhaps in the coming years, with the advent of new research methods, scientists will be able to say more - and then we will know the answer to this question.

Were dinosaurs warm-blooded or cold-blooded?

Scientists have debated this question for decades. And now they are looking for a clue - this time, in the microstructure of the bones. It leads researchers to assume that dinosaurs were some kind of transitional form. To keep warm, they used the strength of their muscles, but, unlike us, full-fledged warm-blooded creatures, their body temperature was not stable. So for now, with some stretch, we are offered to consider them slightly warm-blooded. But so far all the research has focused only on dinosaurs that lived in warm climates. What about those who lived in the polar regions? And how was body temperature regulated in baby dinosaurs? Scientists don't know this yet.

Which dinosaur was the biggest?

The answer to this question interests everyone - but so far it has not been possible to find it. Conventionally, the largest creature is considered to be a “supersaurus” - its size ranged from 30-35 meters. But paleontologists managed to find other remains of similar sizes. The problem is that the bone sets are always incomplete, so the size of dinosaurs has to be calculated by analyzing small fragments of the skeleton. Only when scientists can reliably compare all the found remains with each other, having previously established their full dimensions, will the answer to this question be sufficiently scientific.

How did dinosaurs create couples?

An animal's eating habits can be judged, for example, by its teeth. But, alas, you cannot tell about his mating rituals, as well as other behavioral features, from the fossilized remains. So scientists have to guess on the bones. Do males fight each other over females? Did they try to seduce females with some features of their appearance or behavior? This is unknown. And scientists don’t even know much about the sexual anatomy of dinosaurs. What is known is that they laid eggs. On this basis, scientists suggest that dinosaurs had a cloaca, like modern birds, and this organ served both for defecation and reproduction.

What did dinosaurs use ridges, spines and horns for?

Nature provided many dinosaurs with impressive decorations - ridges, spikes, horns. Particularly impressive was the Triceratops, with its powerful horns and huge bony collar. But why were these decorations needed? At first glance, it seems that their purpose is to repel an enemy attack. But paleontologists don't think so. Another possibility is that they were intended for thermoregulation, but again, research shows that they played a passive role in thermoregulation and this was not their main task. So today the main version is that these devices were intended to attract a marriage partner. Either all these decorations, like peacock tails, were needed to impress a representative of the opposite sex, or they were needed in order to identify individuals of their own species. But this guess has not yet been confirmed either.

How did dinosaurs hunt?

In Jurassic Park, dinosaurs mostly hunted in groups. But here the filmmakers were guessing. Although, based on the preserved traces, scientists suggest that dinosaurs lived in groups, it is not yet known whether they constantly led a herd life, and why they needed it. Maybe they actually got food together, or maybe they gathered for other purposes - for example, to care for their offspring. Most likely, scientists will never know this unless they manage to invent a time machine.

How did they learn to fly?

Many people consider crocodiles to be the closest relatives of dinosaurs. But that's not true. Surprisingly, their closest relatives are birds. Of course, the ancestors of modern birds are not the terrible tyrannosaurs, but small feathered dinosaurs - maniraptor. How did they get into the air? Perhaps they began to jump, trying to catch prey, accelerating along the slopes? But this is just a guess. How dinosaurs actually mastered flight is a mystery for scientists that they hope to unravel.

Which dinosaurs had fur or feathers?

In films, dinosaurs are usually depicted as leathery, like modern lizards. But this is only an attempt to liken the unfamiliar to the known. In fact, science does not know exactly what the outer coverings of dinosaurs looked like. Paleontologists know that some small dinosaurs, the ancestors of today's birds, were covered in feathers. But recent discoveries have shown that even the skin of giant tyrannosaurs may have been covered with an outer layer that resembled either feathers or coarse wool. However, to finally understand what dinosaurs looked like from the outside will require more years of research - and it is unknown what other discoveries lie ahead for paleontologists.

Why were they so huge?

Probably the secret of the popularity of dinosaurs, first of all, lies in their incredible size. Some of them weighed up to 50 tons! Why were they so huge? There are several theories about this set. One of them sees the reason in the hot climate of prehistoric Earth. It stimulated the rapid and active growth of plants, and there was always plenty of food for dinosaurs. So the conditions were quite suitable for growth. True, this theory does not sound very convincing. After all, if you look at it, even before the dinosaurs, the Earth with its generous vegetation was inhabited only by bacteria - but not one of them became a giant bacteria. Other assumptions connect the gigantic size of dinosaurs with the need to protect themselves from other dinosaurs, as well as with their lack of complete warm-bloodedness - however, this is also only assumed. Of course, the answer could be some combination of existing theories, or some other, hitherto unknown reason. But no one knows the exact answer yet.

Which dinosaurs were nocturnal animals?

Of course, the remains cannot tell us about the life schedule of dinosaurs, so scientists have little room for guesswork. Paleontologists make some assumptions based on the presence of ring bones called scleral rings in the eye sockets of dinosaurs. Perhaps they helped giant lizards see in the dark. However, some scientists disagree with this, arguing that these bone structures are also present in diurnal animals, and differ little in structure from nocturnal ones. So the secret of the night life of dinosaurs remains a mystery for now.

How smart were dinosaurs?

As is known, some dinosaurs - for example, stegosaurs - had relatively small brains. But they were by no means stupid. When assessing the intelligence of dinosaurs, we can rely on the so-called "encephalization quotient" (EQ), which shows the ratio of the size of the brain to the rest of the body. According to this indicator, for example, Triceratops can be compared with humans, and other dinosaurs can be compared with modern animals. But this indicator is not reliable enough to allow far-reaching conclusions to be drawn from it. Scientists cannot yet even answer the question of whether, from an evolutionary point of view, dinosaurs could have acquired a human-sized brain if they lived millions of years earlier?

Did they run fast?

Forget what you saw in the movies! The breakneck speed with which the dinosaurs rush there is a gross exaggeration. Dinosaurs' speed was certainly limited by their size, body structure, and metabolism. Their gigantic stature and small front paws are an unmistakable sign that they did not run very fast. Tell me, can you imagine how a stumbling tyrannosaurus tries to get up, helping itself with its tiny front paws? In addition, scientists are trying to calculate the speed of movement of dinosaurs based on their tracks. Alas, preserved traces are not so common. So the main source of information about the speed of ancient dinosaurs remains observation of modern animals. Based on their guesses, dinosaurs moved very slowly, and the fastest of them were the long-legged ornithomimes.

How did they raise their offspring?

So far, scientists are sure of one thing: different types of dinosaurs raised children in different ways. But how? Scientists can only guess from fossils of dinosaur nests and observations of modern animals, especially birds. It is known that dinosaurs laid eggs, which means they gave birth to several babies at once. It is believed that seismosaurs laid 20-30 eggs at a time - some of them were eaten by other dinosaurs, and the rest ensured procreation.
In the 1970s, scientists found a Mayasaurus nest. And not only the nest, but also the full range of its inhabitants - newly hatched babies, grown-up cubs and adults. This means that Mayasaurs took care of their descendants until they became old enough to take care of themselves. But not all dinosaurs did this. Some, such as the apatosaurs, preferred to quickly leave for free bread so that their own mother would not accidentally crush them. However, all of these are herbivorous dinosaurs. Almost nothing is known about the family customs of carnivorous dinosaurs. Scientists speculate that they laid eggs and left them to their own fate - but only because of the lack of finds about their nesting habits. So we can only hope for new successes in excavations.

Which of them was the predator and which was the prey?

Very little is known about which dinosaurs ate which. Scientists can draw conclusions about this only based on the contents of the stomachs of the discovered remains of dinosaurs - and their stomachs are not always full, and they show, at best, what their last meal was, and by no means a complete menu, which could be very varied . For example, the Baryonyx found by paleontologists had fish remains in its stomach. But this is only one type of dinosaur, and this find does not allow us to conclude that it ate exclusively fish.
Another famous find is the remains of a Velociraptor and a Protoceratops grappling in battle, discovered by paleontologists in Mongolia. On the bones of each there were unmistakable marks of teeth. Perhaps they were hunting each other? With a high probability. But so far it is impossible to say this with certainty - and, again, these are only two types of dinosaurs out of hundreds.

What color were they?

Dinosaurs are most often depicted as green or brown, but this is just a figment of the imagination: until recently, people judged the colors of dinosaurs using modern reptiles as a model. But perhaps it will be possible to determine their color in a different way. In 2008, researchers used a scanning electron microscope and discovered that a feather from a 100-million-year-old dinosaur contained melanosomes, organelles containing the pigment melanin. If this is so, it means that the remains of feathered dinosaurs probably retained their natural color. This was confirmed by the discovery of dinosaur remains in 2010 in China. But scientists still don't know how much the pigment changed color after the animal died, or even faded over time. In addition, melanosomes alone are not responsible for coloring; diet, for example, plays a big role. So even the mystery of the color of feathered dinosaurs is something that scientists still have to think about and think about, and the colors of those that were not covered with feathers remain a mystery.

Gigantic monsters,

We walked through the forest,

tree tops,

Head hooked!

Answer: Dinosaurs

Danka loves dinosaurs:
He draws them all day long.
Pterosaurs, brontosaurs
He is not too lazy to draw,
The most ancient on the planet,
Those that died out long ago
And he draws and sculpts,
After watching a movie about them.
What's going on in our house?
Dinosaurs here and there:
On the sofa, on the balcony,
Even in Danka's album
Dinosaurs live.

V. Pakhomov

This is a lizard, not a bird,
He could be proud of his legs
He could run fast
And it had a toothless beak.

2. Archeopteryx

7. Tyrannosaurus

Very scary, large predator,
How sharp his knives are.
He died out a long time ago
You can only meet it in the movies.

We packed our backpacks
And put on boots
Not just to take a walk -
Find the dinosaur.
Where can we find him?
Maybe go to Africa?
“No,” the hippopotamus told us, “
The dinosaur doesn't live here.
It is not in the polar ice,
Not on the distant islands,
The animals did not see him
Neither in the savannahs, nor in the mountains.
And in the desert there is only a camel, -
There is no dinosaur here either.
Finally found him
When we arrived at the museum.

E. Aerova

Many years ago
There lived a dinosaur.
Evil badass dinosaur
The animals called behind my back.

The dinosaur slept at night,
During the day I nibbled moss in the swamp,
And the roads are dinosaur
He didn’t give in to anyone.

Didn't respect anyone
He offended all the little animals.
Whoever comes along
He threatened to flatten everyone.

But one day, one day,
Wandering up to my belly in the mud,
Dinosaur in the mud
Stuck in tightly.

He began to ask everyone to help
Drag him out of the mud,
But frightened animals
They ran away in fear.

That's how the dinosaur went extinct
Many years ago
Himself with a ferocious temper
So cruelly punished.

Hurry up and go to the museum
Take a look at the poor guy
And think about what's wrong with you
You may end up without friends.

Alexey Eroshin