I’ll give an example of what in talking about: let’s say the Jurassic park movies has Dino’s from both the Jurassic period and the Cretaceous period at the same time.
So what i think I’m understanding is that the movies convinced a lot of people that all dinosaurs were part of the same time period, however in real life the Jurassic period had its own set of dinosaurs and the Cretaceous period also had its own set of dinosaurs?
I might need a little more help and elaboration to understand some of this, please try to keep it simple because it’s confusing but I’m also curious too.
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Dinosaurs first evolved around 235 million years ago and the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct around 66 million years ago. The majority of species survive around 1-5 million years so most dinosaurs never knew other types existed. Stegosaurus for example lived during the Late Jurassic around 150 million years ago whilst Spinosaurus lived during the mid Cretaceous around 100 million years ago and Tyrannosaurus lived during the Late Cretaceous around 67 million years ago. All separated by tens of millions of years and all had no clue of each other's existence.
I will say saying the average species lived for 1-5 million years is a little misleading, because most species dont really go extinct as much as change enough that we decide that they changed species. But the lineage doesnt go extinct, it just changed its hat and we are saying they are different.
Thank you, good understandable answer.
And to add to that, dinosaur species lived all over the globe, so often you could even have two dinosaur species alive at the very same time never meet, in the way that say, an African elephant would never meet a kangaroo in the wild.
Although Triceratops and T-Rex? Yeah they lived together and are often found in the same fossil beds, so that depiction is accurate.
Dinosaurs (not counting birds which are also dinosaurs) lived for roughly 180 million years and changed substantially in that timeframe. It wasn’t just one group in the Jurassic and another in the Cretaceous. For example, Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus were both from the Late Cretaceous, but still missed each other by a couple of million years (and lived on opposite sides of the planet).
If memory recalls correctly, I think from the first Jurassic Park film that only Tyrannosaurs & Triceratops and possibly Velociraptor & Gallimimus lived alongside each other. Tyrannosaurus was closer in time to the movie being released than it was to when Brachiosaurus and Dilophosaurus existed.
That said, there is also the fact that dinosaurs and their relatives conquered most of the ecological niches and all the different periods had likely an Abundance of herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, dinosaurs on trees, dinosaurs in the deserts, in the mountains, in the grasslands, in the polar region and so on. And all kinds of swimming and flying reptiles. But most of them we will never know, because they are simply not in the fossil record. Because fossilisation is an extremely lucky and rare process. So, what we see in the museums are glimpses. The lucky few species out of the fossil record, that in itself covers 150 millions of dinosaur years.
Thank you, this is a helpful answer too.
I'd do some research on stratigraphy, as it's a bit more complicated. One thing to understand about palaeontology is that it's much bigger than just dinosaurs, as they are only select characters in a few chapter of a much larger story, to speak in narrative terms.
Yes, different dinosaurs are found in different stratigraphic layers, and are separated by age, fossil content and sedimentary composition, among other things.
Here's a diagram of geologic time. Dinosaurs are found in the Mesozoic Era, which is divided into three Periods, the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. Even these periods are divided into smaller ages/stages.
https://preview.redd.it/9kkv56n5s29g1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d1a00990a56bad50e0d38bd6aeeb562e25f82299
Jurassic Park, and other some dinosaur films, shouldn't have convinced people that dinosaurs lived in the same age, as the dinosaurs in that film just happened to be cloned for a park setting in the early 90's, but in the world of the film, and ours, they actually lived in different times and places. Other times it's the filmmakers taking creative licence or being ignorant about the ecology of dinosaurs. Even documentaries include animals that don't belong in the area/time the program presents (for example, Utahraptor appears in Europe in the 4th episode of Walking with Dinosaurs, when it is found in, you guessed it, Utah, USA).
Some similar groups of dinosaurs are even classified as different species even though they're found in the same geologic formation (check out the Sauropods from the Morrison Formation, for example).
If this is all too much at once, I'd pick your favourite dinosaur, look it up on Wikipedia, or in a book, found out what formation it's from and look at the other fossils found in that formation. Keep repeating with as many animals/plants as you'd like, and gradually build up a general view on biostratigraphy.
Hope this helps!
As an addition to the top answer: keep in mind that at any given point of time when non-avian dinosaurs existed, the world was filled with thousands of distinct species, similarly to the actual diversity of birds and mammals. Only a fraction of them are known to us through fossilisation. During those millions of years, dinosaurs species assemblage changed through environmental change, evolution, smaller extinction events and rediversification.
Jurassic Park is like a zoo where iconic species are randomly captured accross various times and locations and put together for display =)
Just to add some perspective, tyrannosaurus existed closer to us existing than it did compared to something like a stegosaurus
https://preview.redd.it/bffkp6oe159g1.jpeg?width=2520&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd887374a8450ba24019b18d81787bd37babd30e
Yeah, and it goes way beyond splitting the dinosaurs into the three periods of the Mesozoic. Tyrannosaurus for example, only existed for a couple of million years at the very end of the Cretaceous, about 68-66 million years ago. Velociraptor only existed from about 75-70 million years ago.
Here in Cardiff each Easter in the St David's Centre they have a display of some kind made from blocks similar to Lego. A year or two ago they had 12 dinosaur models ,and children were encouraged to go round the St David's Centre and tick them off on a list the Centre had prepared.
I'm no expert but three of the models weren't dinosaurs - one was a pterodactyl, one was a Dimetrodon and one was something like a Dimetrodon, with its legs sticking out sideways, but without a sail.
Lystrosaurus perhaps?
Hi! I’m just learning about this too. There were three periods with dinosaurs. The Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous (that’s the right order too, with Triassic being furthest away). These were millions of years, so a T Rex was around towards the end and is actually chronologically closer to us than it is a stegosaurus, since stegos are from the beginning (I have no idea if anyone else calls them stegos).
I have a weird way of remembering this. So like the biggest extinction EVER (like 90% of life on earth died), was between the Permian and Triassic periods. So I know the Triassic is first.
Then Cretaceous is the prettiest name, and it comes last. That leaves the Jurrasic, which is in the middle!
Anyways my point is that it may be easier to understand that completely different types of dinosaurs were alive at different points in time when you realize that that timeline is so vast (from beginning of Triassic to end of Cretaceous) that it is literally longer than from the first T. rex to now. So there was tons of time for different species to evolve!
I don't think it was the movies that made us think that Dinos lived in the same period, more like a misunderstanding, in Jurassic Park they brought back to life Dinos from other periods at once, but it doesn't mean that they lived in the same period, I think it was more of a stereotype than a movie mistake, people just love blaming Hollywood in things it didn't
Here's a mind blower: Triassic and Jurassic dinosaurs were already fossils when the late Cretaceous rolled around.
Wow. That’s shaken my world.
To add to the other answers, the average “life span” of any given dinosaur species is about 1-2 million years. So most dinosaurs didn’t meet each other even if they lived in the same time period, which spanned tens of millions of years. For example, Albertosaurus and Triceratops both lived in North America during the Late Cretaceous but Albertosaurus was already long gone by the time Triceratops evolved. However, Albertosaurus could have interacted with Eotriceratops, which is a close relative or ancestor of Triceratops.
Just wait until you research Dimetrodon! They never saw dinosaurs- they evolved and went extinct before dinosaurs existed- but this means they aren't dinosaurs. What are they? They are actually early synapsids, stem mammals. Dimetrodon is closer related to humans than it is to any true reptile! A true reptile is a sauropsid- this ancient time was the beginning of separating mammals and reptiles based solely on cranial structure.
I am personally infatuated with the early synapsids and the later therapsids. They used to call them "mammal-like reptiles" but they were neither. Before dinosaurs, before mammals the tetrapod lineage began to separate- this was much closer in the timeline to lobed fin fishes leaving the water than it is to the first mammal. So cool!
Also Tyrannosaurs are far more closely related to penguins than they are to Triceratops or Edmontosaurus or Ankylosaurus.
Yes absolutely true. Dinos were around some 200 million years and many different kinds existed. Note they were not only separated in time but occured in different parts of the world. Movies and stories tend to ignore this with good reason because the audience wants the recognizable favorites. Genetic clones could be from any time of course.
This is correct. Like all life on earth, different species lived in different places and times. A famous example is stegosaurus and T.rex. Stegosaurus lived accross the US and western Europe roughly 155 to 145 million years ago. T. rex lived in the Western US 68 to 66 million years ago. Stegosaurus was as old to T.rex as T.rex is to us!
To put it into modern terms; chariots and electric cars weren't around at the same times, right?
One thing I will say is that Jurassic Park (especially the novel) doesn't minimize that many the dinos shown would never have interacted with each other. The park is a completely unnatural environment created by an actual of pure hubris. It's further implied that the dinosaurs themselves are constantly stressed and confused by their surroundings, which would apply to encounters with each other as well as people.
A Tyrannosaurus would be unfamiliar to a Dilophosaurus the same way we would be unfamiliar to one of the early basal primates.
The first dinosaurs we've found fossils of lived around 200 million years before the T Rex evolved. The time in which the T Rex lived is literally closer to today than to the time the Stegosaurus lived.
The Jurassic period and the Cretaceous period are, along with the Triassic, the Mesozoic Era. The Mesozoic era lasted from 252 million years ago to 66 million years ago, and there were uncountable numbers of different species that evolved, lived, and went extinct during that time. All non-avian dinosaur lived somewhere in that span of almost 200 million years. To give some context. If you could travel back in time 50 thousand years ago, there were Neanderthals in Europe. If you went back around one million years, there would have been a few species of hominids, like homo erectus, using stone tools and maybe even fire. But they would have looked quite odd to you with noticeably small heads and large teeth and jaw. The Mesozoic Era was about 200 times as long as the time from the first evidence we've found of hominids controlling fire, to the invention of the cell phone.
Trex lived closer to our time then it did to the time Stegosaurus was alive
Correct, when I was a kid I caught the "false advertising" of Jurassic Park when I was able to remember T.rex lived during the Cretaceous not the Jurassic. Years later with JP3 the big battle between Spinosaurus and T.rex same thing they lived in two different time periods and locations so they never would've crossed paths
Jurassic Park never pretends that they were all from the Jurassic Period. It was just the name chosen for the park/title of the book.
They are in the same place because it is a zoo.
Glad we both know this
The Mesozoic spanned roughly 200 million years if im remembering correctly