You will hardly find a person who doesn’t know what dinosaurs are. Yet, in the reality, the majority of us has only a vague idea about these legendary animals and the majority of information we know about these ancient giants comes from popular films and books such as, for example, Jurassic Park. Needless to say, such sources as fictional films rarely depict real scientific facts. For that reason, in all likelihood, you might still believe in the opinions about dinosaurs which are actually not true.
There is a high probability that dinosaurs will be able to be cloned in the future
If you happened to read the Jurassic Park book, you should remember the scientific trick performed there. According to the book, the dinosaurs DNA might be present in the fossilised blood sucking insects. Actually, this idea is quite interesting and scientists have come across the real blood of dinosaurs in the insects which were preserved in pieces of amber.
No matter how amazing this fact is, this DNA is still not enough for cloning dinosaurs. The reason for it is the fact that DNA is a rather fragile material and it can be easily destroyed with time. As a result, the DNA chain we can work today is not complete and have many missing pieces. It is impossible to clone an organism using a damaged DNA chain.
The oldest DNA people have a chance to found on earth is the one belonged to one of the seaweed species. Its age is approximately 1,4 million years. Now, you can imagine how old the DNA of dinosaurs can be since they lived nearly 65 million years ago.
The meteorite immediately wiped all the dinosaurs from the Earth
Needless to say that the majority of people imagine the fall of dinosaurs as a species as a rather rapid process caused by the collision of a meteorite with our planet. We can literally see how all those poor creatures were killed by this tremendous catastrophe.
The reality was absolutely different from the popular belief. The meteorite triggered serious changes in the climate, however the process of the dinosaur extinction was rather long. Actually, it took almost 200 000 years! This means that the process was gradual. First, the new climate lead to the decrease of the amount of the plant food which was not enough for the plant-eating dinosaurs. The population of plant-eating dinosaurs was becoming smaller and smaller and, as a result, the number of predators was growing smaller as well.
In addition to dinosaurs, the planet lost many other specious as well. A great number of small specious of seaweed, mollusca, sauropsida and pterosaurs also became extinct. All in all, the planet lost 16% of the organisms of sea species as well as 18% of vertebrates.
Dinosaurs were reptiles
Undeniably, there is a lot of logic in the belief that dinosaurs were reptiles. The mere name of this kind of animals suggests that they were reptiles. In fact, the word “dinosaur” was invented in 1842 by Sir Richard Owen who literally called the creatures “terrible lizards”.
Certainly, the appearance of dinosaurs resembles reptiles a lot, yet, this impression is false. Dinosaurs were direct predecessors of modern birds and there is a great number of proofs of this fact. Actually, a great number of dinosaurs was covered with feathers and many of them had feathers even while they were still inside the eggs.
Another serious reason for connecting dinosaurs with birds in the first place is a large glycogen body located in the lower part of the pine of the many types of the ancient giants. Interestingly, the discovery of this body in the organisms of large dinosaurs such as a stegosaurus made many scientists believe it had a function of the brain for managing the lower part of the dinosaurs’ bodies. Actually, this assumption became one of the popular myths about dinosaurs itself.
A glycogen body is also a part of anatomy of modern birds which use it as a storage for nutritional substances for feeding the nervous system. This peculiar feature undeniably shows the connection between dinosaurs and birds.
Pay your attention to another peculiar fact – no matter how much they can resemble dinosaurs, crocodiles are not related to them at all. In fact, the predecessors of modern crocodiles were crocodylomorphs which evolved even before dinosaurs themselves and dinosaurs were one of the sources of food for this species.
Dinosaurs became completely extinct
Undeniably, everyone knows that dinosaurs are not present on our planet anymore. Still, not everyone is aware of the fact that such a belief is not exactly correct since many new species of animals evolved from dinosaurs and a great number of them can be met today.
Of course, dinosaurs became extinct after the fall of the meteorite, however, these were the species not related to birds. As you now know, dinosaurs were the predecessors of birds, so it is incorrect to claim there are no dinosaurs today. Today, we can see dinosaurs in hens, penguins, peacocks and any other birds.