Dinosaur cake
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Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. The decline of dinosaurs was most likely caused by many different factors. Some species of dinosaurs, such as the dromaeosaur, have fossil records of their feathers. It is generally accepted that modern birds are descendents of dinosaurs.
Although estimates vary, one of the contenders for the largest dinosaur is the Argentinosaurus. When was the first dinosaur fossil discovered? Dinosaur fossils and tracks have been discovered throughout human history. Originally applied to just a handful of incomplete specimens, the clade Dinosauria now encompasses more than 800 generic names and at least 1,000 species, with new names being added to the roster every year as the result of scientific explorations around the world. Before Richard Owen introduced the term Dinosauria in 1842, there was no concept of anything even like a dinosaur. Large fossilized bones quite probably had been observed long before that time, but there is little record—and no existing specimens—of such findings much before 1818.
The earliest verifiable published record of dinosaur remains that still exists is a note in the 1820 American Journal of Science and Arts by Nathan Smith. The bones described had been found in 1818 by Solomon Ellsworth, Jr. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. In 1824 Buckland published a description of Megalosaurus, fossils of which consisted mainly of a lower jawbone with a few teeth. Maidstone Iguanodon, after the village where it was discovered. The Maidstone skeleton provided the first glimpse of what these creatures might have looked like.
Two years before the Maidstone Iguanodon came to light, a different kind of skeleton was found in the Weald of southern England. Hylaeosaurus by Mantell in 1832 and later proved to be one of the armoured dinosaurs. Cetiosaurus, which he named from an incomplete skeleton composed of very large bones. Having carefully studied most of these fossil specimens, Owen recognized that all of these bones represented a group of large reptiles that were unlike any living varieties.