Dinosaurs. Douglas Palmer

      

Dinosaurs.

      COPYRIGHT.

      HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street,. London SE1 9GF.

      WilliamCollinsBooks.com.

      First published in 2006.

       This edition published in 2014.

      Text © 2006 Douglas Palmer.

       Illustrations © 2006 HarperCollins Publishers.

      The author asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      Illustrations by James Robins and Steve White (pages 10, 13, 18, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 31–33 only)

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

      Source ISBN: 9780007222537.

      Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2019 ISBN: 9780007555277.

      Version: 2019-11-29

      NOTE TO READERS.

      This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your e-reader/accessibility settings:

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      How to use Collins Gem Dinosaurs.

      You may choose to read this ebook in a linear fashion, or to explore the information by using the easy-to-use navigation menus, which organise the dinosaurs by period and group.

      Note: A few of the dinosaurs detailed in this ebook belong to more than one period on the timeline. These dinosaurs have been categorised in the predominant period.

      CONTENTS.

      Cover. Title Page. Copyright. Note to Readers.

      INTRODUCTION.

      WHAT IS A DINOSAUR?. DINOSAUR APPEARANCES.. DINOSAUR BEHAVIOUR.. DINOSAUR DIETS.. EGGS, NESTS AND BABIES.. THE ARMS RACE.. TRACKS AND TRAILS.. THE DINOSAUR ERA.. FOSSIL FORMATION.. THE FIRST FINDS.. DINOSAUR NAMES.. ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION.

      THE DINOSAURS.

      GLOSSARY.

      WEBSITES AND FURTHER READING.

      INDEX.

       About the Publisher

      INTRODUCTION.

      To most people, the word dinosaur brings to mind an enormous animal of awesome strength and ferocity. The name dinosaur means ‘terrible lizard’, and thanks to a constant deluge of dinosaur images in popular media, these amazing extinct animals have become perhaps the most iconic creatures in history.

      What is less often apparent is the extraordinary diversity and variety of the dinosaurs. They were not all vast meat eaters and some resembled birds more closely than the reptiles we know today, with feathers rather than scaly skin. This introduction to dinosaur life portrays a selection of the dinosaurs we know most about, from the earliest ones, such as Eoraptor that lived around 228 million years ago, to the latest ones, such as Triceratops that became extinct 65 million years ago. We discover what they were like, where they lived, how they behaved, when they were first found and what the most recent discoveries tell us. Also included is information on what their names mean and how to pronounce them.

      The popularity of dinosaurs has boomed since the early decades of the 19th century, when fossils of these extinct prehistoric monsters were first discovered and portrayed as once living animals. Yet despite the efforts of dinosaur experts over the last 200 years, we still have just a small sample – some 600 different kinds (genera) – of the total range and diversity of these remarkable animals, which dominated life on land for the best part of 100 million years.

      As a result of this, many questions remain unanswered about how they lived, where they came from and how they were related to one another. For example, were