Webosaurs Blog

Git along little dogies...umm...dinos

Hi there dino pals! ModCeno here again today, with an answer to another of your DINOmite questions!

Nara wants to know “Which species of dinosaurs had the highest population?”

Well, looking at the amount of fossils found, it would appear that the HADROSAURS were responsible for the biggest crowds during the late Cretaceous period, beating out tyrannosaurs, ceratopsians, and raptors. Herds of hundreds or thousands of hadrosaurs could be found roaming the woodlands of North America, Europe, and Asia, nibbling on low-lying plants. You could almost think of these duck-billed dinosaurs as prehistoric cattle! (Just don’t try to milk one!!)

Thanks for the question, Nara! Everyone, keep those dinosaur questions coming!

You'd be slow, too, if you had to haul this around behind you!

Hey dinos! Rex is out of town so ModosaurCeno is here, taking a stab at a Daily Dino Fact!

Q: Wait a minute! Wasn’t the ankylosaur one of the slowest dinosaurs to ever live? No wonder they are so slow! They have so much armor! :p -Hornstrkier

A: Our friend Hornstrkier was right when he remembered that the ankylosaur was one of the slowest dinos that ever lived.  Sauropods were pretty slow, too, but given the ankylosaurs’ short legs, we’re going to give the Slowpoke Prize to them! Besides, who needs speed when you are practically an armored tank!

Unicornosaur?

Q: Which dinosaur most closely resembled a unicorn? -Unicornosaur

A: LOL, what a great question! Honestly, I didn’t think I was going to be able to answer this one (though I certainly wanted to). Turns out there is actually a dinosaur whose nickname is “The Unicorn Dinosaur.” The dinos name is Tsintaosaurus, a hadrosaur found in China.

Tsintosaurus was one of the strangest dinosaurs ever found. Unlike other hadrosaurs that had a long crest protruding backward, Tsintosaurus had a long, blunt horn sticking straight out of the forehead. No one knows what it was used for and the theories about it vary widely. What we do know is that it had very powerful jaws and teeth and could have eaten from the toughest of trees.

Unfortunately, Tsintaosaurus lived during the Late Cretaceous. Liopleurodons lived during the Middle Jurassic which means you couldn’t name a Tsintaosaurus “Charlie” and have it meet a “Magical Liopleurodon.”

High five to anyone who gets that reference.

-Rex

I'd say cuddle with it but those claws might get in the way...

Q: Were there any dinosaurs that ate both plants and meat? -Sathvik

A: There are actually only a small handful of dinosaurs that were omnivores (ate both plants and meat). You may know of the Oviraptor or Ornithomimus, but what do you know about the Therizinosaurs?

These were perhaps some of the strangest dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth. These dinosaurs have characteristics from many different kinds of dinosaurs and paleontologists were very confused about them for a long time. Originally they were pretty straight forward theropods, being fierce hunters.

Then…. over time they evolved into lazy sloth dinos. They got bigger over a period of 30 million years and decided they’d just hang out and eat plants. Who needs to hunt when you look this cute and don’t have to?

-Rex

Mei may look small to you, but it isn't to that rodent

Q: What dinosaur has the longest name? What Dinosaur has the shortest name? -Liefdrag

A: Thanks for the question Liefdrag. I was interested in this one myself and I’m actually a little surprised by what I found. I decided to keep the shortest and longest to just the genus name (genus and species would get a little hectic). What is surprising about what I found is that both the longest and shortest names belong to really small dinosaurs!

The dinosaur picture about is Mei, sometimes known as Mei Long. Mei Long means “soundly sleeping dragon” in Chinese. These dinosaurs have been seen in the television show “Prehistoric Park” attacking the documentary group! While they were small, they were probably very fast little scavengers and hunters who could take down small prey easily like the raptors do.

"I don't know how to say your name but you sure are cute"

The picture above shows an artist’s rendition of Micropachycephalosaurus, the longest genus name of any dinosaur. Remember when we talked about the Pachycephalosaurs? These guys were just like them except teeny tiny. Micropachycephalosaurus was about 1.2ft (0.4m) tall and about 1.6ft (0.6m) long. Can you imagine the adorable little head butts these guys would produce if they squabbled? Funny that the dinosaur with the longest name is also one of the smallest ever!

-Rex

Lagosuchus

Q: From which species did dinosaurs evolve? - Chipmunk

A: Another great question. As you can probably assume, dinosaurs didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Dinosaurs didn’t explode until after the Permian/Triassic extinction event that was actually more devastating to life on Earth than the extinction event that killed all of the dinosaurs.

Before the Permian extinction, synapsids were the dominant land dwelling creatures on Earth. Synapsids were mammals of the Paleozoic and any other creature closely related. This group included the famed Dimetrodon, the sail-backed lizard lookin’ thing we all know and love.

You know... this guy

Anyway, some mysterious event happened and killed more than 90% of life on Earth. This was the end of the Permian and the transition into the Triassic. This paved the way for the archosaur takeover in the Triassic. Archosaurs were diapsids, this group is represented in modern day by birds and crocodiles. Some scientists believe that Lagosuchus (pictured at top) is the archosaur that survived the extinction and was the first ancestor that the dinosaurs would have spawned from.

-Rex

MMmmm... delicious gymnosperms

Q: OK Sauropods had to eat a lot of vegetation if they lived in groups. Were the trees and bushes bigger to supply the dinosaurs needs? Were there dino-trees? -Morty

A: Really great question Morty. The answer isn’t quite what you think. If some paleontologists are to be believed, dinosaurs were warm-blooded animals. This means they had to eat a ton of food. You’d think that crews of sauropods were roaming around the Mesozoic just destroying everything in their path. While this was probably true, they got away with it because animal and plant life was actually more sparse than it is today. There just weren’t as many dinosaurs around, so what damage the sauropods did wasn’t too bad because there weren’t very many of them.

The Mesozoic was a very different landscape than the one we have today. For most of the Mesozoic, plant life consisted entirely of gymnosperms. Gymnosperms are seed-bearing plants like ginkgos, ferns, cycads and conifers. Up until the end of the Jurassic, conifers were the most dominant plants around. It was at the end of the Jurassic that we finally started to see what we call angiosperms, which are the flowering pants we know and love today. It is a safe bet that sauropods munched down on all of these delicious veggies!

To address a couple other questions….

Q: What is the fattest dinosaur ever?i wanna know. -Faiththethird. Answer here.

Q: What was the smallest dinosaur? this question has been bugging me please answer. -Iamrich. Answer here.

Q: Were there any bioluminescent dinosaurs? (which means they glow up :P) - Hornstrkier. A: I could not find any information at all about this. Let me know if you find anything differently!

-Rex

Hey everyone,

Just to let you know, this Friday at 18:00 WST we’ll be having another awesome quiz party with our great friends Primary Games and Nitro. The questions will be based off of Daily Dino Facts and I wanted to give you a chance to ask that aching dinosaur question for me to answer before the quiz party. I’ll try to get at least two up before the party on Friday. Just post your question as a comment on this post!

Check the blog for more info on this party including server and location.

Keep bluggin’

Rex

ROOOAAAARRRRR

Hey guys! Just wanted to give you a little update on our last Daily Dino Fact. Last time I asked you to see if you could find an article that proved another dinosaur tooth had been found bigger than T-Rex’s. Let’s see who came up with what.

Aquatica-

Aquatica found an article discussing a tooth that was found in Spain last year. It belonged to a kind of Allosaurus and is the biggest ever dino tooth found in that country! Not quite the biggest ever but nice find! (Credit also goes to Cos for finding this one)

Starwar388-

Another article similar to the one that Aquatica posted. The tooth found was the biggest ever found in Japan and scientists aren’t exactly sure what type of Theropod it came from but it certainly was a meat eater. I didn’t see this one at all when I was researching, great find!

Screechie-

Screechie found some teeth of a Spinosaurus. Not quite the biggest either but a very fierce predator!

Shadowflyer-

Shadowflyer linked us to the very dangerous and insanely ferocious MEGALODON shark!! While technically not a dinosaur (It swims and was not alive during the Mesozoic era) I’d say this gets equal credit. It’s teeth were over 17 or 18 centimeters long! WOW.

I’m down with giving a coin code to all of these dinos for their great work in dinosaur research. If you are on this list, send info@weboasaurs.com an email to claim your coin code!

-Rex