Dinosaur

A Tyrannosaurus Rex!

Dinosaurs are a category of creatures of the Clade Dinosauria which first emerged around 250 Million Years ago in the Triassic period. Generally these creatures have been classified as reptiles since their discovery and cataloguing by modern science. However due to recent discoveries, it created a large divide among the Paleontologist communities on whether they should still be classified as inherently reptile or something completely new.

Dinosaurs came to be the dominant form of large, scaled, land dwelling life forms across all of earth's major continents through the Jurassic and Cretaceous period. Dinosaurs were and are the biggest animals ever to live on land, however what counts as "The" biggest is often up in debate by the Scientific community, usually this ends in flamewars between Sauropod-Fanboys and Cetacean-Fanboys (Yes they do exist), but the more neutral term is Sauropods=Land and Whales=Ocean....kind of like the relationship between Star Wars and Star Trek.

They are regarded as awesome for several reasons....

• They appeal to the sensational because they're "monsters", but unlike most they actually did exist.
• It's also been postulated that dinosaurs were the inspiration for dragons (with people discovering dinosaur bones and making up stories about them, though that is debatable).
• Some of the largest land carnivorous dinosaurs are larger (As in much larger) then the largest living land mammal, the African Elephant
• The largest Sauropods are big enough that they can be classified as "Kaiju-Size" and could furthermore cause mini-earthquakes and create sonic booms with their tails
• One of the largest land mammals of all time are still classified as "Small-Sized" by Sauropod standards
• A popular idea is if the Meteorite did not hit Earth, then it would be the Troodon (One of the many 'intelligent' Dinosaurs) that would be building civilizations and spaceships

Tl;dr, Dinosaurs are NOT to be fucked with.

A modern day Dinosaur of the Therapod Line

Most lines of dinosaur, however were extinguished during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event some 65 million years ago. The only surviving branch of this clade are birds. Other surviving relatives of dinosaurs and other ancient monsters include: crocodiles, a different branch of the archosaur family that carries on its traditions of eating whatever they want and giving no fucks about mammals; and the Komodo dragon, a species of monitor related to the mosasaur (which was not technically a dinosaur - or even archosaur - itself, but rather a relative to lizards and snakes), which carries Jurassic-era bacteria so virulent that a single bite can fatally infect other animals.It is surprising the God-Emperor didn't engineer himself a T-Rex to ride on. It would have been both retarded and sweeeeeetttttt.

Things people think are Dinosaurs, but aren't

• Pterosaurs: These flying arcosaurs had among their ranks the largest flying creatures that ever lived and were related to dinosaurs, but are not
• Marine Reptiles: During the Jurassic, Triassic and Cretaceous periods there were a variety of large marine reptiles, including Icythosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Mosasaurs and Marine Crocodiles. As these creatures are big, reptillian and look like dinosaurs they are generally lumped in as dinosaurs. In truth these are a number of separate families that took to the sea.
• Synapsids: Before the dinosaurs really took off as the dominate form of life during the Triassic period the Synapsids, or "Mammal like reptiles" where king. Members of this Clade include Dimetrodon or that 'fin back lizard thing' in the Land Before Time. You can tell there not dinosaurs (and this is a very loose definition)thanks to the legs being on the sides of there body's not under them like Mammals, but still a bit more under them then modern lizards. As the name suggests these guys became the early mammals which turned into us.

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