How Do We Know What Dinosaurs Looked Like?

By putting their bones back together like a puzzle. Some scientists know how muscles and tendons would be positioned in order for the animal to walk, move, and bite etc. Taking that into account and then covering the entire animal with skin, we have a pretty close representation of what the animal looked like.

Coloring is another issue. The dinosaurs could have been pink with green dots. It is most likely to assume that they would have blended in with the surroundings and were probably brown, grey and green. No one knows for sure at this point in time. Scientists are making new discoveries all the time. Maybe they will find some colored dino skin in the future.

Did you know that dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible? They are not called dinosaurs but the behemoth and the leviathan. Its in the book of Job, chapters 40 (verse 15-24) and chapter 41 (verses 1-10). Some versions say they are elephants or alligators, but if you remember the elephant's tail, it is very small - not like the tail of a cedar that the King James Bible says it is like. Then, in verse 19 of chapter 41, it says the leviathan spits fire from its mouth, and I know that alligators can't do that. Just thought you would like to know.

Scientists believe .that dinosaurs first appeared on the earth about 180 million years. Ago, and died out about 65 million years ago. This is long before human beings appeared on Earth, and also before such animals as dogs, rabbits, horses monkeys, or elephants.

Fossils

Everything we know about dinosaurs - and everything we will ever know - comes from fossils. These are remains which these creatures left in the earth.

There are many different kinds of fossils:

• The most common fossils are petrified remains of what were the hard parts of their bodies — bones, teeth, and claws. Scientists can study these remains and from them reconstruct how the whole body of the dinosaur was built!
• Sometimes, petrified tendons and skin are found, and this provides even more clues.
• Fossils can also be trails or footprints that were made in wet sand or mud that hardened into stone over the ages. From these, it is possible to tell how the dinosaurs walked and whether it was on two legs or four.
• And the rarest fossils of all from this time are dinosaur eggs.

In this way, we can tell that the Brontosaurus was a monster from 20 to 25 meters long and weighed about 38 tonnes. We know it lived in swamps and was a plant-eater.

We also know that a dinosaur called Allosaurus had sharp teeth and powerful claws and it fed upon Brontosaurus and oilier plant-eaters. You see, scientists have found - among the broken and deeply scratched bones of the Brontosaurus— fossil teeth of the Allosaurus!

Dinosaurs have been present on Earth for more than 200 million years, but no one had ever heard of them until 1841, simply because there was no name or definition for them as a group of fossils.

This was 165 years after the first published illustration of a dinosaur bone and many years after the first dinosaur was named and described, Dinosauria - coming from deinos, the Greek for "terrible", and sauros, Greek for "lizard".

Fossils are a great way of getting a close picture of what dinosaurs might have looked like.

We don't really know what they looked like because we have no evidence except their bones. We don't know what color they were or what type of skin they had - all we know is what shape they were.