DINOSAURS

Good evening audiences. I am reporter Kitty. So now, let's start with a quiz show
without rewards. Guess who they are! Do you know a group of creatures that
walked the earth before us? Yes, the answer is dinosaurs! But we are sure that
some of you don't know they first appeared in the early Triassic Period, from
about 233-243 million years ago. There were about 1,543-2,468 dinosaurs.
Through this quiz show, definitely, most of you have already known today's topic
is dinosaurs, right? Now, let's go to the main idea, we will send you to Jurassic
World, but you can only see 5 dinosaurs. First, this is Megalosaurus, a carnivorous
dinosaur. This carnivore is the first dinosaur that was ever found, it is not only one
of the earliest discovered dinosaurs, but it is also one of the first dinosaurs to be
described in scientific literature. It was first discovered in 1676 at a stone quarry
in England. While this original bone is now lost, it was described in the Natural
History of Oxfordshire. However, it was misidentified as a thigh bone of a Roman
war elephant by Robert Plot. Later, a more intact fossil of this dinosaur was
discovered in 1819 by William Buckland. Five years later, he named it
Megalosaurus; a name that means “great lizard.” In 1827, it was finally assigned
its scientific name: Megalosaurus bucklandii. Megalosaurus lived around 166
million years ago, during the mid-Jurassic period, in Europe (including England,
France, and Portugal). It went extinct 161 years ago. However, the exact cause of
this dinosaur's extinction isn't known yet, but it is believed that caused by an
asteroid strike, or abrupt climate change.

You are seeing a carnivorous dinosaur called Meraxes Gigas, which is the latest
full-body fossil found. In 2012, this giant carnivorous dinosaur’s fossil was found
in the Northern Patagonia region of Argentina, by Juan Canale. He was part of the
traditional team of paleontologists, led by him at the Ernesto Bachmann
Paleontological Museum. Meraxes gigas was described in 2022 by Canale et al.
Based on these remains, the generic name ‘Meraxes’, honors the dragon from the
song of Ice and Fire, and the book in the game of Throne series. The specific
name, ‘gigas’, references its large size. It walked the earth 90 million years ago,
during the late Cretaceous Period, and went extinct 20 million years ago, before
T-rex became a species.
Argentinosaurus was discovered in 1987 in Argentina by Guilermo Heredia. It
lived during the Cretaceous period about 92 - 100 million years ago, which was
the last period before dinosaurs went extinct. Argentinosaurus went extinct in the
late Cretaceous Period, about 65 million years ago, because an asteroid that hit
Mexico and doomed many dinosaurs but some bird dinosaurs survived in that
massive extinction. Here are some facts about this gigantic herbivorous dinosaur.
First of all, Argentinosaurus was a type of dinosaur known as a Titanosaur, which
was from a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs, including genera from all 7
continents.
Plus, this creature flew with a speed of 80 miles/h at elevations of 10000 to 15000
ft in the sky. It may has used both its wings and hind legs to walk upon landing on
the ground. The hollow bones made it possible for it to fly at such great
elevations. Its wings were made of leathery skin with extended flaps.
One of the food of Mosasaurus was molluscs with shells such as Nautilus. Nautilus
were abundant in the Creta sea. As you can see, this is a picture of Mosasaurus, in
its mouth is a dead turtle, because around that area spreads out a lot of blood. Do
you know Mosasaurus had no feet? Yes, it only had flippers. It looked like a
dinosaur but it’s only distinct relatives.