Ancient reptiles. Rebirth

Two hundred million years ago, the rulers of our planet were ancient reptiles. It was the crown of the creation of that time! No other class of animals retained "power" for as long as reptiles. They were many - ancient lizards, crocodiles, hatteria, but the top of their development were, of course, dinosaurs. Beast animals lived everywhere: on land, in water, in the air!

Science about dinosaurs

Ancient reptiles left behind a lot of mysteries that not everyone can unravel. On the remnants of the bones of the animals, with a competent approach, one can "paint" a picture of the past: the external data of the lizard, his way of life, and so on. This is what paleontologists are doing. Their work is somewhat like the work of detectives: for broken fragments they have to restore a whole period of life of a giant reptile! Here you need to be able to competently combine your intuition with logic and imagination, collecting the smallest fragments of the "past life" of a dinosaur. Restoring the pictures of the past is not an easy task. Without fantasy and well-developed consistent imagination is indispensable. Paleontology is, to some extent, creative science: even a seemingly insignificant fact, with its correct justification, can play an important role in the chain of events of that era ... The epoch of dinosaurs!

A little classification

Reptiles are A rather peculiar group of living beings. The fact is that this class is divided into subclasses, the most primitive and ancient of which are the so-called anapsids. The last of them died out 200 million years ago. A separate branch of this group is the synapsides. These are the ancestors of mammals. The synapsides themselves did not live to the heyday of their descendants. Even later, an offshoot of diapsids appeared, which in turn was divided into lepidozaurs and arhosaurs. The first can be attributed to living in our time, lizards, snakes, gatteries, and some extinct marine predators with long and snake-like necks called plesiosaurs. Archosaurs include crocodiles, pterosaurs and dinosaurs. These ancient reptiles almost all died out. Only crocodiles remained. Are they the only descendants of ancient reptiles? Not certainly in that way!

Feathered heritage

Direct descendants of dinosaurs are birds. Although it is not a class Reptiles, but it is the birds with their structure and appearance that remind the ancient lizards. At the same time, feel the difference: the birds are the descendants of non-flying beast-seekers such as the pterosaur of quetzalcoatl, namely "terrestrial" dinosaurs! The flying lizards became extinct without leaving any legacy.

The death of the dynasty

The ancient reptiles were very diverse and numerous, no other group of animals could compare with their perfection and organization . The animals have been studied and continue to study with greater interest than other extinct animals. The collapse of the "empire of the dinosaurs" still gives birth to so many theories, disputes, versions. For whatever reason, the death of the reptilian rulers around the world did not happen, several million years passed before the Earth was able to recover from the global catastrophe. When it all happened, the giant dinosaurs were no longer there. They died out forever. Instead of them there were others - beautiful and strong animals! But we already know that one small group of descendants of ancient reptiles managed to survive, and today its representatives are everywhere around us ... These are birds!