Dinosaurs

Huge and sometimes ferocious, dinosaurs ruled the earth for more than 175 million years. To us, dinosaurs might be scary-looking. But humans never had to fear dinosaurs because they died out 65 million years ago, a long time before the first people were around!

Dinosaurs lived in a period called the Mesozoic era, which began about 240 million years ago. This era can be divided into three periods. The first is the Triassic period, when Dinosaurs first emerged. At that time, they were smaller and made up only about 5 per cent of the land animals that were around. Next came the Jurassic period, which was where the dinosaurs began to thrive. They spread across the whole earth and grew much larger in size. It was in this period that the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex first appeared. The Cretaceous period that followed saw many new species emerge, along with more mammals and different kinds of plants. Over this time, the dinosaurs became the most dominant animals around.