Real Dinosaurs vs Fiction
Distinguish real dinosaurs from fictional or commonly confused creatures: pterosaurs (flying reptiles) and plesiosaurs (marine reptiles) were not dinosaurs, and movie dinosaurs are not always accurate
What a learner can do afterwards
- State that pterosaurs could fly but were not dinosaurs
- State that plesiosaurs lived in the sea but were not dinosaurs
- Identify at least one way a movie or cartoon dinosaur differs from the real animal
1 · Read
Long ago, real dinosaurs lived on land. Other animals lived then too. Some looked like dinosaurs, but they were something else.
Pterosaurs had wings and could fly. Dinosaurs could not fly, so pterosaurs were not dinosaurs. Plesiosaurs swam in the sea with flippers. Dinosaurs lived on land, so plesiosaurs were not dinosaurs either.
In movies, Velociraptors look huge and scaly. Real Velociraptors were small, about the size of a turkey. They also had feathers, like a bird.
When you see a prehistoric animal, ask if it flew or swam. Flying and swimming animals were not dinosaurs.
Pterosaurs flew and plesiosaurs swam. Neither one was a dinosaur.
More to read
Linking birds and dinosaurs
A long time ago, scientists found a very old fossil. It was called Archaeopteryx. It had wings like a bird. But it also had teeth and a long bony tail, like a dinosaur. This fossil helped scientists learn that birds came from dinosaurs. Some other ancient reptiles are often mixed up with dinosaurs. Pterosaurs could fly, but they were flying reptiles, not dinosaurs. Plesiosaurs lived in the sea, but they were sea reptiles, not dinosaurs. Many real dinosaurs had feathers, just like birds do today. But in a lot of movies and cartoons, dinosaurs look scaly and have no feathers at all.
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2 · Watch
En anglaisTake it off screen
Where it sits
Learn first
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.