Paleontologists, amateur fossil hunters, and others have unearthed amazing creatures from a bygone age. I thank the people who dug for dinosaur fossils starting back in the 17 century. The skilled preparators who chiseled bones out of the rock in countless basement laboratories. The exhibit craftsman who bent the ironwork to mount the skeletons. All the people who have kept the great museums going for the last century that housed these magnificent beasts. But there is some heresies about dinossauros that need mentioned.
One heresy that has been corrected are that dinossauros were once thought to drag their tails behind them. All museums had their dinosaur fossil specimens on display with their tails on the ground. When the men and women who unearthed the bones of these awesome beasts, they found the bones very disarticulated.It was not until recently when they found complete fossil skeletons that showed the tail positioned from the hips and up in the air behind them. Sauropod dinossauros such as Diplodocus and Apatosaurus (formerly Brontosaurus) used their tails not only as a counterbalance but as a defensive weapon, much like a bullwhip is used.
Another heresy is that Duck-billed dinossauros (Hadrosaurs) were aquatic.Duckbills could not swim because their forepaw was manifestly inadequate for effective propulsion in water. The front toes were short and the three main fingers were carried closely together with hardly any spread at all to the no geral, global hand pattern. A very strange arrangement indeed if these dinossauros were fond of swimming. The hind feet did not fair any better. Duck-billed dinossauros hind toes were among the very shortest ever. Much shorter, for example, than those of the meat-eating Tyrannosaurus or the plant-eating horned dinossauros such as Triceratops.
Then there was the Iguanodon heresy that it walked on all fours and that it had a spike on its nose. This all changed when they found complete skeletons of them in a Belgium mine that clearly showed they were bipedal (walked on two legs) and that the spike was actually a thumb spike on its front paws.
Here is a heresy that lasted over a hundred years. The dinosaur in pergunta was Brontosaurus which means "thunder lizard". A dinosaur of this size truly would of made the ground shake and sound like thunder with every step it took. But what was wrong with this dinosaur is that it had a wrong name and a wrong skull. The fossil skeleton O.C. Marsh found was an Apatosaurus without a skull. So he decided in order to complete this dinosaur, he needed to find a skull for it. Marsh did find one but it was from a different quarry many miles away. The skull that he found belonged to a Camarasaurus. So his Brontosaurus was an Apatosaurus with a Camarasaurus skull. A hundred years later they finally made a correction to this dinosaur. They put the right skull on this dinosaur. The skull Apatosaurus should have had was slender like a Diplodocus skull. Sorry the heretic Brontosaurus is no longer with us in the major museums. They only have the Apatosaurus with the correct skull mounted on it.
One heresy that has been corrected are that dinossauros were once thought to drag their tails behind them. All museums had their dinosaur fossil specimens on display with their tails on the ground. When the men and women who unearthed the bones of these awesome beasts, they found the bones very disarticulated.It was not until recently when they found complete fossil skeletons that showed the tail positioned from the hips and up in the air behind them. Sauropod dinossauros such as Diplodocus and Apatosaurus (formerly Brontosaurus) used their tails not only as a counterbalance but as a defensive weapon, much like a bullwhip is used.
Another heresy is that Duck-billed dinossauros (Hadrosaurs) were aquatic.Duckbills could not swim because their forepaw was manifestly inadequate for effective propulsion in water. The front toes were short and the three main fingers were carried closely together with hardly any spread at all to the no geral, global hand pattern. A very strange arrangement indeed if these dinossauros were fond of swimming. The hind feet did not fair any better. Duck-billed dinossauros hind toes were among the very shortest ever. Much shorter, for example, than those of the meat-eating Tyrannosaurus or the plant-eating horned dinossauros such as Triceratops.
Then there was the Iguanodon heresy that it walked on all fours and that it had a spike on its nose. This all changed when they found complete skeletons of them in a Belgium mine that clearly showed they were bipedal (walked on two legs) and that the spike was actually a thumb spike on its front paws.
Here is a heresy that lasted over a hundred years. The dinosaur in pergunta was Brontosaurus which means "thunder lizard". A dinosaur of this size truly would of made the ground shake and sound like thunder with every step it took. But what was wrong with this dinosaur is that it had a wrong name and a wrong skull. The fossil skeleton O.C. Marsh found was an Apatosaurus without a skull. So he decided in order to complete this dinosaur, he needed to find a skull for it. Marsh did find one but it was from a different quarry many miles away. The skull that he found belonged to a Camarasaurus. So his Brontosaurus was an Apatosaurus with a Camarasaurus skull. A hundred years later they finally made a correction to this dinosaur. They put the right skull on this dinosaur. The skull Apatosaurus should have had was slender like a Diplodocus skull. Sorry the heretic Brontosaurus is no longer with us in the major museums. They only have the Apatosaurus with the correct skull mounted on it.
