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This did not change when Richard Owen coined the term Dinosauria in 1842, because Owen did not recognise Thecodontosaurus as a dinosaur; in 1865, he assigned it to the Thecodontia. It was not until 1870 that Thomas Huxley became the first person to understand that it was a dinosaur, though referring it incorrectly to the Scelidosauridae. [19]
The name thecodont is Greek for "socket-tooth", referring to the fact that thecodont teeth were set in sockets in the jawbones; an archosaurian characteristic that was inherited by the dinosaurs. While the taxon Thecodontia is obsolete, the term thecodont remains in use as an anatomical description of teeth in bony sockets; in addition to ...
Heterodontosauridae is a family of ornithischian dinosaurs that were likely among the most basal (primitive) members of the group. Their phylogenetic placement is uncertain but they are most commonly found to be primitive, outside of the group Genasauria. [2]
Dinosaur classification began in 1842 when Sir Richard Owen placed Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, and Hylaeosaurus in "a distinct tribe or suborder of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria." [1] In 1887 and 1888 Harry Seeley divided dinosaurs into the two orders Saurischia and Ornithischia, based on their hip structure. [2]
No dinosaur egg has been found that is larger than a basketball and embryos of large dinosaurs have been found in relatively small eggs, e.g. Maiasaura. [53] Like mammals, dinosaurs stopped growing when they reached the typical adult size of their species, while mature reptiles continued to grow slowly if they had enough food.
While the dinosaurs' modern-day surviving avian lineage (birds) are generally small due to the constraints of flight, many prehistoric dinosaurs (non-avian and avian) were large-bodied—the largest sauropod dinosaurs are estimated to have reached lengths of 39.7 meters (130 feet) and heights of 18 m (59 ft) and were the largest land animals of ...
Dinosauromorpha is a clade of avemetatarsalians (archosaurs closer to birds than to crocodilians) that includes the Dinosauria (dinosaurs) and some of their close relatives. It was originally defined to include dinosauriforms and lagerpetids , [ 3 ] with later formulations specifically excluding pterosaurs from the group. [ 4 ]
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period , between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is a subject of active research.