GEOL& 106 Dinosaurs – Flashcards
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After two half-lives, what percentage of a sample of 235U is left?
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25%
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Strata
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Layers of rock
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Formation
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The basic unit used to map rocks, defined by characteristics of its strata
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Science
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Changes with new evidence and ideas
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Dinosaurs
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Mesozoic terrestrial reptiles that walked with an upright stance
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Science is based on
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evidence
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Dinosaur fossils are mostly found in
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Sedimentary rocks deposited in lakes and swamps
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Fossil
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Evidence of past life found in the rock record
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Non-dinosaur reptiles of the Mesozoic include
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ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs and phytosaurs
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Dinosaur fossils are found in
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Every continent
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They types of fossils are
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Trace, body and chemical
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Paleontologists
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Scientists who study fossils
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The firs description of a dinosaur, Megalosaurus, was published by
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William Buckland in 1824
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The socket in a dinosaur's pelvis that helps facilitate upright stance is
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Acetebulum
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An example of further research changing our knowledge is
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Pterosaurs being put into birds
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One major way in which dinosaurs are different from other reptiles is
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They walked with an upright stance
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A graphic illustration of the closest evolutionary relationships of organisms is called
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A cladogram
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The many fenestrae in the skull of the archosaurs provide
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Additional room for muscle attachment
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Archosaurs include
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Dinosaurs, crocodiles and pterosaurs
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The fourth trochanter is characteristic of dinosaurs and is found on which bone?
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Femur
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What animal is phylogenetically closest to dinosaurs
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Pterosaurs
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What is NOT a diagnostic feature of dinosaurs?
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A single post-orbital fenestrae
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On a cladogram, the organisms at the top
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Share fewer characteristics than organisms below
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Paleontologists are at a disadvantage compare to biologists because
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They only have skeletal structures to study
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Synapsids have one postorbital fenestra, are extinct and
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are also called mammal-like reptiles
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The two dinosaur clades are distinguished by
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The arrangement of the three pelvic bones
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The science of the classification of living and extinct organisms is
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Taxonomy
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Dinosaurs first appeared how many million years ago?
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230
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What are the names of the periods when dinosaurs lived, arranged from oldest to youngest?
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Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous
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At the start of the Triassic, all the continents were
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Joined into one continent called Pangaea
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The climate of the Triassic was
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Hotter than today and arid
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The earliest confirmed dinosaurs came from what country?
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Argentina
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The first dinosaurs were
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Small and bipedal
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The oldest dinosaur is
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Eoraptor
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The common ancestor of all dinosaurs must have been
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Small, bipedal with a small head
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A dinosaur that has more traits than its ancestor is
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Derived
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The oldest North American dinosaur is
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Coelophysis
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Lesothosaurus was a
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Basal ornithischian
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The inferred reason for Lleaellynnosaura having such large eyes was
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It was dark much of the year in the high southern latitudes where it lived
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Thyreophorans are
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Armored dinosaurs
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What is NOT a characteristic of thyreophorans?
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Bipedal stance
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The most commonly accepted function for the plates on the stegosaurus was
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Species recognition and sexual selection
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During what time period did most stegosaurus live?
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Jurassic
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During what time period did most ankylosaurs live?
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Cretaceous
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Ornithischians living in the Jurassic ate
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Ferns, conifers, ginkgo, cycads and horsetails
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Angiosperms
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Are the flowering plants and only became plentiful in the late Cretaceous
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Ornithopods were
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Facultative quadrupedals
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Skull modifications in ornithopod dinosaurs facilitated
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Chewing
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Unossified bone ends are evidence that Maiasuara
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Care for its young
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The best environment for fossilization of dinosaur ones was
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In swamps, lakes and coastal areas
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The first animals to evolve the ability to process their food before digestion were
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Ornithopods
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The mid-late Cretaceous was characterized by
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Large herds of hadrosaurs
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What feature would NOT have made food gathering and processing more efficient for ornithopods?
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Expanded nares
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What is not characteristic of ornithopods
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Peg-shaped teeth
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Maiasuara nests set in sequential layers of rick imply
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It cared for its young
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Marginocephalian means
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Ridged head
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Marginocephalians lived in the same time period as
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Hadrosaurs
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Ceratopsians from Mongolia and China
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Were smaller than their North American counterparts
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Shearing dental batteries are characteristic of
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Ceratopsids
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The last major dinosaur clade to evolve was
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Ceratopsians
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What is NOT true of Pachycephalosaurs?
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Quadrupedal
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What IS true of Pachycephalosaurs?
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Bony knobs and spikes on skull, lived in late Cretaceous and thickened dome on skull
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The diversity of teeth and extra gut room in pachycephalosaurs indicates
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They may have eaten plants and animals or insects
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Studies of coprolites, possibly of marginocephalians, suggest
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They ate fungus
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Torosaurus and Triceratops were
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The mature and juvenile forms of the same species
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In the late Jurassic
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The continents had started to split and the Atlantic Ocean was forming
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In the late Jurassic, the climate was characterized by
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Slightly cooler temperatures, continental interiors wetter, seasonal snow and ice at poles
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The saurischian pelvis is notable for
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The forward pointing pubis often with a large "boot"
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Saurischian dinosaurs were
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Both carnivores and herbivores
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Brachiosaurus, Apatosaurus and Stegosaurus
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Are all found in the Morrison Formation of the western United States
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What sauropod had longer forelimbs than hind limbs?
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Brachiosaurus
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Evidence that sauropods grew fast is seen in
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Thin sections of pones
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Air sacs in the bones of sauropods may have served to
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Stiffen bone structure, save weight, increase muscle control
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A key piece of evidence shown by sauropod trackways is
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Sauropods did not drag their tails
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What is NOT characteristic of sauropods?
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Bipedal
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Diplodocoid and macronarian sauropods had different types of teeth. What does this suggest about their life styles?
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The teeth were well-suited to cropping vegetation similar to horses and they had peg-like teeth that was used to collect algae
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Titanosaurs lived in the
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Cretaceous
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What is the advantage to sauropods pf growing fast?
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The sauropods would then be much larger at an earlier age than if they were determinate growers, and they would continue to grow over time, still, as indeterminate growers do; and in social groups, this allows the matured dinosaurs to be distinct from the juvenile ones
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Fused collarbones are known as
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The wishbone (furcula)
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In the early Cretaceous, the climate was
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Cooler, with snow and ice at the poles
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Homeothermy
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The ability to maintain constant or near constant body temperature
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Endothermic
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Warm-blooded
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Ectothermic
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Cold-blooded
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During the Cretaceous
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Continents were split apart and high sea levels flooded the interior United States
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The clade theropoda is characterized by
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Pointed, serrated teeth, hollow bones and a furcula
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Theropods first evolved in the
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Triassic
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An example of a primitive tetanuran is
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Allosaurus
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Meglosaurs, spinosaurs, allosaurs and tyrannosaurs are all
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Tetanurans
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Spinosaurs were specially adapted
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For swimming
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The great white shark inspired the name for
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Carcharodontosaurus
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The tyrannosaurids lived primarily in the
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Late Cretaceous
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What feature of T. rex was NOT listed by Jack Horner as evidence for being a scavenger?
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Large brain
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What features of T. rex WAS listed by Jack Horner as evidence for being a scavenger?
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Small beady eyes, increased olfactory lobes and small arms
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List three things that suggest dinosaurs may have been endothermic
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Their growth rates were just as fast as mammals, which are all endothermic; their metabolism rates were high and they moved swiftly; and birds are endothermic
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The terrestrial animal with the most powerful bite ever was
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Tyrannosaurus rex
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The primitive condition for theropod hands is
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Four digits
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Dilophosaurus is a
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Primitive theropod
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List three characteristics of the giant meat-eaters
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Being specialized runners and predators; relatively large eyes; and the teeth were relatively large, curved, compressed and serrated
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Bony quill knobs on Velociraptor's forelimbs are evidence that
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It had feathers
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Digit two on the hind foot of Velociraptor
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Has an enlarged, movable claw
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Dromaeosaurs and Troodons are collectively known as
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Deinonychosaurs
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Unlike other theropods, Therizinosaurs
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Were not carnivorous
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Deinocheirus was
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Nearly as big as T. rex
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Oviraptor probably
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Sat on its nest
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A paleontologist looking for Deinonychosaurs would not look in
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Triassic rocks
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Two characteristics of Deinonychosaurs
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Deinonychosaurs had large skulls that were full of serrated teeth, a backward-directed pubis, a stiffened tail and huge claws on the second toes of the hind feet
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Geographically, deinonychosaurs were found
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Globally
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The stiffened tail of Deinonychosaurs
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Allowed them the stability to be quick, agile predators
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The Dinosaur with the highest EQ
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Dromaeosaurids and Troodons
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What was different about the hip structure of deinonychosaurs compared to the other theropods?
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Deinonychosaurs have a backward-directed pubis; their hips were like those of birds (ornithischian)
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When John Ostrom found Deinonychus he realized it must have been an agile, speedy predator. Name three features that might have helped him to this conclusion
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The long tail of the Deinonychus served as a counterbalance; its skeletal structure suggests speed, high sustained activity and agility: hollow bones, large claws, limb proportions; it was a bipedal creature
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The man who named the Dinosauria was
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Sir Richard Owen
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If a sedimentary rock contained a dinosaur bone and a crystal that we dated as 230 million years old, what is the age of the dinosaur?
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We can;'t tell, because the age is only the age when the crystal formed
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A dinosaur is defined as
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A Mesozoic terrestrial reptile that walked with upright stance
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A fossil is
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Evidence of past life found in the rock record
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Dinosaur fossils are found where?
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On every continent
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The first published description of a dinosaur was by William Buckland. What dinosaur was it?
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Megalosaurus
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The acetabulum is
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A hole in the socket of the pelvis in which the femur articulates
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Crocodiles, pterosaurs and dinosaurs are all
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Archosaurs
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Fenestrae in reptile skulls
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Provide room for muscle attachment
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The femur of dinosaurs has a distinctive feature called the
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Fourth trochanter
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Phylogenetically closest to dinosaurs are the
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Pterosaurs
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Mammal-like reptiles
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Are synapsids and all extinct
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The two dinosaur clades are distinguished by
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The arrangement of the three pelvic bones
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What is NOT a characteristic shared by dinosaurs and reptiles?
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Upright stance
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What are the time periods when the dinosaurs lived arranged in order from oldest to youngest?
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Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous
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The oldest certain species of dinosaur is
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The Eodromaeus
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In phylogeny, derived means
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Has the same characteristics as its ancestor plus some other traits
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The plates on stegosaurs were probably used for
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Species recognition
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Angiosperms became plentiful food for dinosaurs
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In the late Cretaceous
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Growth rates in hadrosaurs were studied using
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Thin slices of bone revealing miscroscopic structure
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Ornithopods were the first animals to
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Evolve the ability to process food before digestion
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What are the characteristics of ornithopods?
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Large size, three-toed feet and a modified skull structure for chewing
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The arrangement of the continents in the early Triassic was
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All joined together
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Coelophysis can be found inn what strata of rocks?
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Triassic
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Most ankylosaurs lived in which time period?
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The Cretaceous period
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In the late Cretaceous you might have seen
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Large herds of hadrosaurs
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List the periods of the Mesozoic arranged from youngest to oldest
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Cretaceous, Jurassic and Triassic
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Paleontologists think what characteristic of Llaellynosaurus might have helped it live successfully in high latitudes?
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Large eyes
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What are the features of theyreophorans?
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Small head, bony armor, closed antorbital fenestra
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If 12.5% of a sample of 235U is left in a rock, how many half-lives have elapsed?
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3
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A chart showing the closest evolutionary relationships of organisms is called a
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Cladogram
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Armored dinosaurs are also known as
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Thyreophorans
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Upright stance means
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Walking with legs tucked under the body
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Mary Ann Mantell found the bones of a dinosaur which her husband, Gideon, described. What dinosaur was it?
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Iguanodon
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