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Above: Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis
DINOSAURS ARE SO AWESOME LIKE BRO THEY'RE SO COOL!!!!!!
....
Yes, I love dinosaurs.
Okay so for those of you who have been living under a rock, what is a dinosaur?
Dinosaurs are a group of animals belonging to the clade "Dinosauria". The Dinosauria clade is in the same reptilian group as the one that includes crocodiles and pterosaurs, the creatures that people oftentimes call "flying dinosaurs". This larger group with dinosaurs, flyers, and crocs is called "Archosauria".
Archosaurs really gained their foothold on Earth in the Triassic, a period in Earth's history that lasted from 250 million to 200 million years ago (though it's not really proven exactly when even though most people will say towards the end).
And while they survived in the Triassic they absolutely thrived in the Jurassic. And they certainly had their day in the Cretaceous period too before they all...well, you know, DIED 66 million years ago.
Now despite what I said about then being related to crocs and flying reptiles, the closest living relatives of dinosaurs are birds (so yes that kid that Alan Grant scared in Jurassic Park wasn't all that wrong). So yes dinosaurs did have feathery plumage for a multitude of reasons ranging from insulation in the Arctic north to...how do I say this without being put on a list? Yeah okay some species would've used their feathers to get gals so they could make more dinosaurs.
This brings me to my next point.
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Above: Tyrannosaurus rex
There are A LOT of dinosaurs. To say that there's a lot of dinosaurs would be a helluva understatement.
People today are (justifiably) amazed by the sheer diversity of life on Earth. But if those same people stopped and looked at the proper diversity that the non-avian (non-bird) dinosaurs had, yeah they're brains would undergo heat death.
One dinosaur genus, just one could be part of a dinosaur family tree so massive that it's like Mother Nature went full batshit crazy.
Like bro aside from the common ones there's so many you have no idea! Like, okay, I know I'm going on a tangent but here's what I mean when I say there's a lot of dinosaurs (prepare yourself).
