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The physiology of dinosaurs has historically been a controversial subject, particularly their thermoregulation.Recently, many new lines of evidence have been brought to bear on dinosaur physiology generally, including not only metabolic systems and thermoregulation, but on respiratory and cardiovascular systems as well.
Dinosaurs can therefore be divided into avian dinosaurs—birds—and the extinct non-avian dinosaurs, which are all dinosaurs other than birds. Dinosaurs are varied from taxonomic, morphological and ecological standpoints. Birds, at over 11,000 living species, are among the most diverse groups of vertebrates.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to dinosaurs: . Dinosaurs – diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria.They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period (about in 1963) until the end of the Cretaceous (2000), when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction ...
Like all sauropods, Nigersaurus was a quadruped with a small head, thick hind legs, and a prominent tail. Among that clade, Nigersaurus was fairly small, with a body length of only 9 m (30 ft) and a femur reaching only 1 m (3 ft 3 in); it may have weighed around 1.9–4 t (2.1–4.4 short tons), comparable to a modern elephant.
In the modern fauna, theropods are represented by over 11,000 species of birds, which are a group of maniraptoran theropods within the clade Avialae.. Theropoda (/ θ ɪəˈr ɒ p ə d ə /; [2] from ancient Greek θηρίο-ποδός [θηρίον, (therion) "wild beast"; πούς, ποδός (pous, podos) "foot"]), whose members are known as theropods, is an extant dinosaur clade that is ...
Heinrich Mallison (in 2009) was the first to study the physical potential for various sauropods to rear into a tripodal stance. Mallison found that some characters previously linked to rearing adaptations were actually unrelated (such as the wide-set hip bones of titanosaurs ) or would have hindered rearing.
Dinosaur vision was, in general, better than the vision of most other reptiles, although vision varied between dinosaur species. Coelurosaurs , for example, had good stereoscopic or binocular vision, whereas large carnosaurs had poor binocular vision, comparable to that of modern alligators.
All carnivorous dinosaurs (certain types of theropods) are traditionally classified as saurischians, as are all of the birds and one of the two primary lineages of herbivorous dinosaurs, the sauropodomorphs. At the end of the Cretaceous Period, all saurischians except birds became extinct in the course of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction ...