Unusual Dinosaurs
- There was a prehistoric creature which lived during the Cretaceous period called deinosuchus. It was very closely related to today’s alligators - although it was around eight times as big!
- Corythosaurus had a large bony crest on top of its head, containing a large hollow chamber into which its nasal passages extended. This acted as an amplifier for sound, and it is thought that it could have had a cry much like the sound of a trumpet!
- The skull of the pentaceratops (a dinosaur with five horns on its head) was an amazing three metres long!
- The quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur from the late cretaceous period, had a wingspan of at least eleven metres - and some think it could have been as much as twenty! This makes it one of the largest flying creatures the earth has ever seen.
- Therizinosaurus had claws which were each a whole metre long. Scary!
- It is thought that the troodon was the most intelligent of all the dinosaurs. It lived around 77 million years ago, was around two metres long and had the brain the size of a comparable mammal today.
- Therizinosaurus had extremely long and thin claws, effectively like medieval swords. With three on each hand, this was certainly a dinosaur you wouldn’t.
- Archelon was a sea turtle that lived around eighty million years ago measuring four metres long and almost five metres wide from flipper to flipper.
- Sinornithosaurus is a small, turkey-sized member of the raptor family that had long fang-like teeth that scientists believe were used to inject venom into their prey.
- Oryctodromeus cubicularis burrowed under the ground with its shovel-like snout; its name literally means ‘digging runner of the lair’.
Plesiosaurus