--- title: Not dinosaurs at all: pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and Mary Anning — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Not dinosaurs at all: pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and Mary Anning», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Toy boxes and cartoons call every big old reptile a dinosaur, but scientists have a rule: a dinos --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Not dinosaurs at all: pterosaurs, ples… # Not dinosaurs at all: pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and Mary Anning Lesson 270 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/0/) — Toy boxes and cartoons call every big old reptile a dinosaur, but scientists have a rule: a dinosaur stood with its legs straight under its body, not sprawled out to the side like a lizard's. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/1/) — So the flying pterosaurs and the swimming plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and ichthyosaurs were not dinosaurs, even though they lived at the same time. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/2/) — A pterosaur's wing was skin stretched from one hugely long fourth finger, and the biggest, Quetzalcoatlus, stood as tall as a giraffe and strode about on all fours like a giant stork. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/3/) — Long before scientists understood any of this, a girl called Mary Anning in Lyme Regis, England, dug out the first complete ichthyosaur at about 12, and spent her life finding fossils on the stormy beaches. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/4/) — In The Flintstones cavemen keep dinosaurs as pets, but no person ever saw a living non-bird dinosaur: they were gone 66 million years before the first humans. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/5/) — Pterosaurs, often called pterodactyls, were flying reptiles, close cousins of dinosaurs but not dinosaurs, and the first animals with backbones to fly. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/6/) — A pterosaur wing was skin stretched from a very long fourth finger. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/7/) — Quetzalcoatlus stood as tall as a giraffe, with wings about 10 metres across; it walked on all fours and caught small animals on land, and probably vaulted into the air with its strong arms. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/8/) — Plesiosaurs were sea reptiles with four flippers that died out 66 million years ago; a fossil mother with a baby inside shows they gave birth in the sea. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/9/) — The famous 1934 Loch Ness monster photo was a fake made with a toy, and a big reptile could not live in a cold lake with so little food. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/11/) — Ichthyosaurs, the «fish lizards», looked like dolphins but were reptiles, and one kind had eyes about as big as a football, among the biggest eyes of any animal, for seeing in deep, dark water. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/12/) — Mary Anning of Lyme Regis found the first complete ichthyosaur when she was about 12; she became an expert fossil hunter but got little credit in her time, because the scientists of her day did not take seriously a working woman who had never been to university, and today she has a statue. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/13/) — Dimetrodon, with its sail, lived about 280 million years ago, before any dinosaurs, and is closer to mammals, and so to us, than to dinosaurs. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/14/) — Dinosaurs had legs straight under the body, which shows as a hole in the hip socket; flying and swimming reptiles do not count as dinosaurs. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/15/) — Woolly mammoths were mammals with fur that fed their babies milk; they lived until about 4,000 years ago and never met dinosaurs. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/16/) — Humans appeared about 300,000 years ago, while the non-bird dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago. - ← previous: [Feathered dinosaurs: from Archaeopteryx to the chicken on your plate](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/269-feathered-dinosaurs-archaeopteryx-to-chicken/) - next →: [The asteroid: the day the dinosaurs died and who survived](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)