The Dinosaur Book

210 Pages·2018·70.385 MB·English

by  DK

EDINOSAUR K
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s m i t h s o n i a n
EDINOSAUR K
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WRITTEN BY JOHN WOODWARD
CONSULTANT DARREN NAISH
Smithsonian
THE SMITHSONIAN
Established in 1846, the Smithsonian—the world’s largest museum
and research complex—includes 19 museums and galleries and the
National Zoological Park. The total number of artifacts, works of art,
and specimens in the Smithsonian’s collection is estimated at 154 million.
The Smithsonian is a renowned research center, dedicated to public
education, national service, and scholarship in the arts,
sciences, and history.
US_002-003_Title.indd 3 10/04/18 4:31 PM
SForeword 6
Timeline of life 8
DK Delhi TChanging planet 10
Senior Editor Anita Kakar
Senior Art Editor Stuti Tiwari Bhatia Types of fossils 12
Editors Sneha Sunder Benjamin, Tina Jindal
Art Editors Devika Khosla, NFossil finds 14
Debjyoti Mukherjee, Nidhi Rastogi
Assistant Editor Aishvarya Misra
Origin of life 16
Assistant Art Editor Ankita Sharma
Jacket Designers Suhita Dharamjit, Juhi Sheth
Game-changers 18
Jackets Editorial Coordinator Priyanka Sharma
E
Senior DTP Designer Harish Aggarwal
Evolution and
DTP Designers Jaypal Chauhan, Vijay Khandwal,
Nityanand Kumar, Rakesh Kumar
extinction 20
Managing Jackets Editor Saloni Singh
T
Pre-production Manager Balwant Singh
The vertebrates 22
Production Manager Pankaj Sharma
Senior Managing Editor Rohan Sinha
Managing Art Editor Sudakshina Basu What is a dinosaur? 24
N
DK London Inside a dinosaur 26
Senior Editors Shaila Brown, Ben Morgan
US Editor Kayla Dugger
Senior Art Editor Jacqui Swan
Jacket Editor Amelia Collins OBefore the
Jacket Designer Surabhi Wadhwa-Gandhi
Jacket Design Development Manager Sophia MTT dinosaurs 28
Picture Researcher Jo Walton
Producer, Pre-production Jacqueline Street-Elkayam
Senior Producer Alex Bell CThe first animals 30
Managing Editor Lisa Gillespie
Built to survive 32
Managing Art Editor Owen Peyton Jones
Publisher Andrew Macintyre Set in stone 34
Art Director Karen Self Trilobites 36
Associate Publishing Director Liz Wheeler
The age of fish 38
Design Director Phil Omerod
Publishing Director Jonathan Metcalf Fish armor 40

Early life on land 42
First American Edition, 2018
Published in the United States by DK Publishing Towering trees 44
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 Arthropod empire 46
Copyright © 2018 Dorling Kindersley Limited Airborne giant 48
DK, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC Early amphibians 50
18 19 20 21 22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Rise of the reptiles 52
001–311231–Sep/2018
Reptiles branch out 54
All rights reserved.
Hungry hunter 56
Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved
above, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited
A catalog record for this book is available from
the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4654-7476-6
Printed in China
A WORLD OF IDEAS:
SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW
www.dk.com
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The age of Taking off 138
Early birds 140
dinosaurs 58
Giant birds 142
High-speed killer 144
The first dinosaurs 60
Prosauropods 62 Pterosaurs 146
Sauropods 64
Mobile necks 66
Early pterosaurs 148
Titanosaurs 68
Later pterosaurs 150
Footprints and trackways 72
Prowling predator 152
Stegosaurs 74
Colorful crests 154
About tails 76
Deadly spikes 78
The marine world 156
Ankylosaurs 80
Dinosaur defense 82
Life in Mesozoic seas 158
Iguanodontians 84
Early marine reptiles 160
Plant-eaters 86
Flippers and tails 162
Hadrosaurs 88
Giant marine reptiles 164
Cool crests 90
Ambush hunter 166
Dinosaur eggs 92
Dinosaur crèche 94
The rise
Pachycephalosaurs 96
Ceratopsians 98 of mammals 168
Head-to-head 100
Herds and packs 102 A new world 170
Early theropods 104 Trapped in amber 172
Spinosaurids 106 The first mammals 174
Allosauroids 107 Giant sloths and armadillos 176
Cutting edge 108 Body cover 178
Tyrannosaurs 110 Mega-marsupials 180
Ultimate hunter 112 Giant herbivores 182
Ornithomimosaurs 114 Horns and antlers 184
Oviraptorosaurs 116 Powerful predators 186
Arms and hands 118 Mammal teeth 188
Protective wings 120 Saber charge 190
Therizinosaurs 122 Ice-age giants 192
Sharp claws 124 Primates 196
Dromaeosaurs 126 Early humans 197
Toothed eagle 128 Window to the past 198
Dinosaurs
take flight 130
Glossary 200
Skin, scales, and feathers 132 Index 204
Feathered hunters 134
Acknowledgments 208
First up 136
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P a c h ycephalosaurus Gigantsp inosaurus
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Foreword
hadn’t really changed over time. But in the late 18th
century, scientists started examining strange shapes
The amazing variety of life that exists on our planet found in rocks and realized that they were fossils—
is so rich that new kinds of organisms are still being the remains of ancient life that had been turned to
discovered every day. More than 2 million species stone. Most of these fossils were of seashells and
(types of organisms) have been named and described other familiar forms, but some were dramatically
by scientists, and there are probably millions more different—huge bones, skulls, and teeth of gigantic
waiting to be discovered. But these are only a tiny animals that lived millions of years before the dawn
fraction of the species that have ever existed on of human history.
Earth in the past. If you were to go back in time 100 Using fossils that date right back to the
million years, you would find yourself surrounded by beginning of life on Earth, about 3.8 billion years
just as many different animals and plants as today, ago, scientists have been able to piece together most
but—unless you had read this book first—you of the history of life. One of the most exciting parts
wouldn’t recognize any of them. of that story started about 230 million years ago
Until a little over two centuries ago, no one with the earliest dinosaurs. Over the following
realized this. They thought that the animals they saw 164 million years, these animals were to evolve
around them had always existed, and that the world into the most spectacular land animals that have
Corythosauru s
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Sciad Phlegethontia
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Jehol
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ever walked the Earth. They included gigantic beasts
Throughout this book, you will find scale boxes that
that weighed as much as 12 elephants; terrifying
show the sizes of animals compared to either a child,
hunters that could bite their way through solid bone;
a school bus, or a human hand.
and strange creatures with horns, frills, and
even feathers.
The giant dinosaurs were wiped out in a global
Child = 4 ft 9 in
catastrophe 66 million years ago. But their fossils (1.45 m) tall
survive, along with other fossils that show, beyond
doubt, that many of their smaller, feathery relatives
were able to fly. Some of these feathered dinosaurs
survived the disaster to flourish in the new era School bus = 36 ft
(11 m) wide
as birds. So not only do fossils tell us about life in
the distant past, they can also reveal astonishing
facts about animals that we see all around us
Hand = 6 in
every day.
(16 cm) long
John Woodward
T i t a nis
Waptia
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Timeline
n of life
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The story of life on Earth is written in the rocks. Over millions of Early Earth
years, sediments like sand and clay settle on the floors of lakes
Paleozoic Era
and oceans and harden to form layer after layer of sedimentary
Mesozoic Era
rock. Trapped in these ancient deposits are the fossilized
remains of prehistoric organisms, with each layer capturing Cenozoic Era
a snapshot of life from a different period in history. Million years ago MYA
251–200 MYA 200–145 MYA
Triassic Jurassic
Reptiles ruled the world in The Jurassic saw the rise
the Triassic. They gave rise of the colossal plant-eating
Rhamphorhynchus
to the first dinosaurs, the sauropod dinosaurs such as
first flying reptiles, and Brachiosaurus, as well as the
the first true mammals, giant meat-eating theropods
which were little bigger that preyed on them. Smaller
than shrews. Crocodiles theropods evolved into the first
and turtles appeared, and birds. Deserts shrank and forests
the giant aquatic reptiles of conifer trees, monkey puzzles,
cruised the ocean. and ferns spread across the land. Allosaurus
299–251 MYA
Permian
Moschops Earth’s climate dried out in the Permian, and
deserts replaced forests. Reptiles and related
animals called synapsids were the dominant land
animals. Unlike amphibians, which breed in water,
reptiles laid waterproof eggs and could breed on
land. At the end of the Permian, most of
Earth’s species were wiped out by
a catastrophe of
Edaphosaurus unknown cause.
4.6–0.5 billion years ago 542–488 MYA
Precambrian Cambrian
The Precambrian is a supereon A wide range of new animal fossils
that makes up nearly nine-tenths appear in rocks from the Cambrian
of Earth’s history. For most of it, the Period. A sudden burst of evolution—
only life forms were single-celled the Cambrian explosion—seems to
organisms in the ocean, such as have produced animals with the first
cyanobacteria. Fossilized imprints limbs, heads, sense organs, shells, and
of much larger, leaf-shaped exoskeletons. All the major categories
organisms that might have been of invertebrate alive today originated
animals appeared about 600 million in the Cambrian, from mollusks and
years ago. Known as the Ediacaran arthropods to echinoderms such as
organisms, these life forms vanished Helicoplacus (a relative of starfish).
at the end of the Precambrian.
8 Cyanobacteria Helicoplacus
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