5 The smallest dinosaur was about 4 inch (10 cm) tall and weighed two pounds – less than a chihuahua.

This dinosaur, named the Fruitadens haagarorum, probably lived a 150 million years ago, and fed mainly on plants and insects. According to the director of the Dinosaur Institute of the Natural History Museum, the dinosaur “would have looked like a roadrunner on steroids”, and was tiny enough to dart between larger dinosaurs’ legs unnoticed.(source)

4 Jurassic World got it wrong: velociraptors, contrary to how they were portrayed in the film, were quite small and covered in feathers, and not nearly as scary.

The discovery of a relative of the velociraptor – called the Zhenyuanlong suni – has indicated that the velociraptor looked quite different from the way they were portrayed in the famous Jurassic Park film series: they would have been no more than five feet long, and would have been covered in bright plumage.(source)

3 The fossil of a mammal was discovered with a dinosaur in its stomach, proving that our Mesozoic ancestors did feed on dinosaurs.

The 130 million year old fossil of a mammal called Repenomamus robustus was discovered with a small dinosaur in its stomach, which, by proving that early mammals used to feed on dinosaurs, contradicts the idea that early mammals couldn’t attack and feed on a dinosaur due to their size and strength – or the lack of both.(source)

2 DNA has been found to have a 521-year half-life. Therefore, the oldest samples of DNA that can be cloned can be no more than 2 million years old. This rules out any possibility of dinosaurs being replicated, as the youngest dinosaurs lived more than 65 million years ago.

After the death of an organism, the enzymes begin to break down the bonds formed in DNA, with micro-organisms aiding the decay. However, determining the rate of DNA decay was slightly difficult, until paleogeneticists discovered the half-life of DNA to be 521 years, therefore ruling out any possibility of cloning dinosaurs.(source)

1 Taxonomically, modern-day birds aren’t just thought to be the descendants of dinosaurs, but are considered to BE dinosaurs.

Birds are considered to be the only surviving descendants of dinosaurs. While earlier they were considered to be of a separate class which had evolved from dinosaurs – a superorder of dinosaurs, in fact – they have now been recognised as actually being dinosaurs; they are classified under the subgroup Maniraptora, viz., coelurosaurs, which are theropods, and consequently, dinosaurs. So, what do you know, but dinosaurs really aren’t extinct.(source)

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