--- title: Dinosaurs: kinds, sizes and how they lived — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Dinosaurs: kinds, sizes and how they lived», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Dinosaurs ruled the land for about 160 million years, from about 230 to 66 million years ago, and they came in every size, from --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/) [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/) / Dinosaurs: kinds, sizes and how they l… # Dinosaurs: kinds, sizes and how they lived Lesson 75 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/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/0/) — Dinosaurs ruled the land for about 160 million years, from about 230 to 66 million years ago, and they came in every size, from the chicken-sized Compsognathus to Diplodocus, longer than two buses. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/1/) — Stand under the open jaws of a T. rex skull in the museum and you see a bone-crusher: teeth like bananas and one of the strongest bites of any land animal that ever lived, but arms only about a metre long. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/2/) — Plant-eaters were not helpless: Stegosaurus had tail spikes, Triceratops horns and a frill, and Ankylosaurus armour down to its eyelids and a club that could break a leg bone. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/3/) — Films and cartoons get a lot wrong: real Velociraptor was turkey-sized and feathered, pterosaurs and plesiosaurs were not dinosaurs at all, and no person ever saw a living T. rex. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/4/) — Tyrannosaurus rex lived about 68 to 66 million years ago in western North America, was about 12 metres long and had thick teeth up to about 30 centimetres with the root, able to crush bone. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/6/) — Stegosaurus was a plant-eater about 9 metres long that lived about 150 million years ago, with two rows of bony back plates and four tail spikes; the idea of a second brain in its hips is a myth. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/7/) — Triceratops was a plant-eater about 9 metres long with three horns and a bony frill, living at the same time and place as T. rex; some fossils have healed T. rex bite marks. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/8/) — Long-necked sauropods were the biggest land animals ever: Diplodocus was about 26 metres long, and Argentinosaurus and Patagotitan may have weighed as much as ten elephants or more; a long neck let them reach lots of plants while their heavy bodies stood still, which saved energy. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/9/) — Velociraptor lived in Mongolia about 75 million years ago, was about the size of a turkey and had feathers; a 1971 fossil shows one locked in a fight with a Protoceratops. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/10/) — Pterosaurs such as Quetzalcoatlus, with a wingspan of about 10 metres, had wings of skin on one long finger and were not dinosaurs; neither were plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs or Dimetrodon. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/11/) — Birds, though, are the flying dinosaurs of today. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/12/) — All dinosaurs hatched from eggs; even the biggest eggs were only about the size of a football, because a much bigger egg would need a shell too thick for the baby to break out, and Maiasaura, the good mother lizard, nested in colonies and seems to have fed its young. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/13/) — Ankylosaurus was covered in bony plates, even on its eyelids, and swung a heavy bony tail club that could break a leg bone. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/14/) — Spinosaurus lived in North Africa about 95 million years ago with a back sail and a crocodile-like snout for fish; scientists still argue how well it swam, and it never met T. rex. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/15/) — Compsognathus was about 1 metre long including its tail, and the feathered Microraptor was about the size of a crow, with feathers on its arms and legs. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/75-dinosaurs-kinds-sizes-and-lives/16/) — The first humans of our kind appeared only about 300,000 years ago, and Stegosaurus lived longer before T. rex than T. rex lived before us. - ← previous: [Fossils: how we know about life long ago](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/74-fossils-life-long-ago/) - next →: [The end of the dinosaurs, and birds as living dinosaurs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/76-end-of-the-dinosaurs-and-birds/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)