At the beginning of the Triassic period, the continents were joined together in one giant landmass called Pangaea which began to break apart in the mid-Triassic, forming Gondwana (South America, Africa, India, Antarctica, and Australia) in the south and Laurasia (North America and Eurasia) in the north.
The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, formerly known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (or K-T) extinction event, is the most well-known because it wiped out the dinosaurs.
Dinosaur fossils have been found on all seven continents.
Stegosaurus was designated the official state dinosaur of Colorado in 1982. The very first stegosaurus fossil was found in Colorado in 1876.
Among the features linking theropod dinosaurs to birds are a furcula (wishbone), air-filled bones, brooding of the eggs, and (in coelurosaurs, at least) feathers.
Dinosaurs are divided into two groups by the structure of their hip bones: the Ornithischia, or "bird-hipped" dinosaurs, and the Saurischia, or "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs. The division between the two groups was made by H.G. Seeley in 1888.
The first confirmed non-carnivorous fossil theropods found were the therizinosaurs, originally known as segnosaurs. First thought to be prosauropods, these enigmatic dinosaurs were later proven to be highly specialized, herbivorous theropods.
The oldest dinosaur remains in Canada were embedded in sediments along the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia's Minas Basin and are approximately 200 million years old.
In 1859, the first scientifically documented dinosaur egg fossils were discovered in France by Jean-Jacques Poech, although they were mistaken for giant bird eggs.
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