Page 8 - The Dinosaur Book and Other Wonders of the Prehistoric World (DK-Smithsonian)

Gigantspinosaurus

Pachycephalosaurus

Styracosaurus

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

Corythosaurus

Sciadophyton Phlegethontia

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