Page 17 - Dinosaur (DK Eyewitness Books)

AIRBORNE GIANT
Cretaceous pterosaurs included
Bulbous structure
Immensely on lower jaw the largest of all flying reptiles.
long wing Ornithocheirus had a long snout,
but its most remarkable feature
was its great size. This might have
been one of the largest pterosaurs
ever—as heavy as a man and with
Trailing foot the wingspan of a small plane.
Ornithocheirus flew above Europe
and South America about
125 million years ago.
Wing making
downstroke

Beak with
small teeth

Lightweight,
Sensitive, furry body
pointed nose
HERE COME THE BIRDS
The first truly modern birds Long
tail
began to appear in the Cretaceous
Period. Hummingbird-sized Liaoxiornis was one
of the smallest birds from the Mesozoic Era. It
lived in eastern Asia early in the Cretaceous Period.
Liaoxiornis looked like modern birds, but probably
belonged to a group of primitive birds called
enantiornithes (“opposite birds”). In these birds,
a knob on the coracoid bone near the shoulder
fit into a basin in the shoulder blade. In birds MODERN MAMMALS
today, the arrangement is the other way around. New kinds of mammal were emerging in the Cretaceous
Period, including Zalambdalestes, an early placental mammal,
with unborn young nourished by a placenta in the mother’s
womb. Zalambdalestes lived in Late Cretaceous Mongolia and
had a long nose like that of an elephant shrew. It hunted in
the undergrowth, crushing insects between molar teeth.

SEA MONSTER
At a length of about 40 ft (12.5 m), Mosasaurus was one of
the largest of the Late Cretaceous marine mosasaur reptiles.
The mosasaurs were more closely related to lizards than to
dinosaurs. Mosasaurus swam with paddle-shaped limbs and
a long, flattened tail, seizing fish and ammonites in its huge,
sharp-toothed jaws. Its fossils were discovered in 1764 near
Maastricht, the Netherlands, and Mosasaurus was named
after the nearby Meuse River, called Mosa in Latin.

SALTASAURUS (75 MYA) EDMONTOSAURUS (70 MYA) ALBERTOSAURUS (72 MYA)
This sauropod was named after the Argentinian Edmontosaurus was one of the last and largest of the A predator with a massive head and tiny,
province of Salta where its fossils were first found. hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs). Up to 43 ft two-fingered hands, Albertosaurus was somewhat
Saltasaurus was 39 ft (12 m) long, with an unusual (13 m) long and perhaps as heavy as an elephant, smaller than its close relative Tyrannosaurus.
hide protected by thousands of small, bony lumps. this plant-eater roamed western Canada. Both lived in western North America.

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