KidZone Animals: Dinosaurs
Common Misconceptions
Scientists (palaeontologists) have been trying to learn more about dinosaurs for years. However, sometimes new evidence is unearthed that disproves old theories about dinosaurs. Learning new dinosaur facts is great, but it also leads to some older misconceptions.
Dinosaurs are really fascinating creatures, which means that Hollywood loves to make movies and entertainment all about prehistoric times. Sometimes Hollywood changes some of the dinosaur facts so that the movies are more interesting, but this also gives the public some misinformation.
Below are some common misconceptions in bold and the actual theories about dinosaurs.
All dinosaurs are extinct...
- Although dinosaurs (as we think of them) went extinct at the end of the cretaceous period, dinosaurs are not technically gone from the Earth. Birds are also a type of dinosaur—avian dinosaurs!
Dinosaurs looked like reptiles with scaley skin...
- Some dinosaurs were scaley but not all of them. Some dinos had feathers too! There are preserved dinosaur feathers and feather evidence in some fossils.
Dinosaurs lived during the ice age...
- Dinosaurs didn't live during an ice age. It is was actually so much warmer in the age of the dinosaurs that even the ice caps were melted.
Dinosaurs and cave people lived together...
- Although birds are technically dinosaurs, traditional dinosaurs (like t-rex, triceratops, etc) went extinct way before the hominid line, which leads to modern humans, evolved. Dinosaurs went extinct around 65.5 million years ago and the first hominids—the Australopithecus ramidus—didn't appear until around 4 million years ago.
Some dinosaurs live underwater...
- Dinosaurs can't live underwater so aquatic, prehistoric animals (like the mesosaurus) are actually marine reptiles, not dinosaurs.
Pterodactyls are flying dinosaurs...
- Pterodactyls are not actually dinosaurs. They are flying reptiles.
A hanging pterodactyl fossil.
Photographed by Renaud LEON;
used with permission under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0