Dinosaurs have been extinct for a long time, how did scientists weigh them?

Between 1 and 10 metric tons.

The muscular limbs, long tails, and massive bodies are some of the non-avian dinosaurs. They inhabit mainly forested lands or open areas on lakeshore plains (or coastal plains).

In 1841, British scientist Richard Owen was studying several pieces that looked like lizards.

The bones were fossilized when thought to be left over from some kind of prehistoric animal and named dinosaurs, which means "terrifying lizard".

Shape features – skeletal features.

For the huge herbivorous dinosaurs, strength was the most important requirement. Their leg bones are large and strong, large enough to bear a huge body. At the same time, they have evolved an ingenious construct that reduces the weight of other bones without attenuating their strength.

The smaller, fast-moving dinosaurs evolved a trait that can also be seen in modern animals: thin-walled bones. The bone resembles a hollow tube, with a thin outer wall made up of heavy bone, which is much lighter bone marrow.

Fast-moving herbivorous dinosaurs, such as Oak Tree Dragon, had this thin-walled long bone. We can assume that this skeleton is meant to reduce weight and thus gain greater speed when escaping from predators.

The cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs is still being studied. "For a long time, the most authoritative view was that the extinction of the dinosaurs was related to a large meteorite 65 million years ago." According to research, there was an asteroid with a diameter of 7-10 kilometers that fell on the surface of the earth, causing a large **, throwing a large amount of dust into the atmosphere, forming a dust fog that obscured the sky and the sun, causing the photosynthesis of plants to temporarily stop, and the dinosaurs became extinct.

1.The asteroid impact theory quickly gained support from many scientists. This view is further confirmed by the discovery in 1991 of a meteorite impact crater in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula;

2.Climate change said. 65 million years ago, the Earth's climate changed dramatically, and the temperature dropped dramatically, causing the oxygen content of the atmosphere to drop, making it impossible for dinosaurs to survive.

It is also believed that dinosaurs were cold-blooded animals with no hair or warmth organs on their bodies, unable to adapt to the drop in the earth's temperature, and were frozen to death;

3.Species Struggle Theory;

4.Continental drift theory;

5.Geomagnetic change theory;

6.Angiosperm poisoning said.

Ouyang Hospital Dinosaur Extinction Cause 6

Before the advent of humans, dinosaurs used to be the most powerful beings on Earth. They were born more than 200 million years ago in the late Triassic period, flourished in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and finally became extinct from the earth 65 million years ago due to a sudden asteroid hitting the earth.

How powerful were dinosaurs? Through fossil research, scientists say that dinosaurs are the largest known creatures on the earth, and their largest weight can even reach dozens of tons.

Duck-billed dragon fossils unravel the mystery

Hadrosaurus is a herbivorous dinosaur that appeared in the late dinosaur period, and the largest known duck-billed dinosaur is more than 22 meters long and weighs nearly 4 tons.

By studying the duck-billed dinosaur fossils, scientists have discovered that the trabecular bone structure of the duck-billed dragon is completely different from that of mammals and birds, which may be the key to supporting the dinosaur's huge body.

Speaking of which, all vertebrates on Earth have trabeculae, which are found in the bone marrow cavity, a three-dimensional reticulated structure with irregular shapes, such as loofah or spongy.

Modern research has found that trabeculae are slowly absorbed by bones as they age, and the weight of bones becomes heavier. In folklore, there is a saying that "the older you are, the heavier your bones", in fact, it is caused by trabeculae.

However, there is an exception to everything, and the trabeculae of dinosaurs are very special. Tony Fiorillo, a paleontologist from Southern Methodist University in the United States, said that after studying duck-billed dinosaurs and analyzing the fossilized bones of other dinosaurs, it was found that the trabeculae of dinosaurs were not absorbed with age.

And the trabeculae of the dinosaur are very light, it has always remained unchanged from the moment it appears, so that the weight of the dinosaur's bones will not increase, and the dinosaur can support its huge body with very light bones, even if it looks very clumsy, in fact, many dinosaurs are very fast.

Why do dinosaurs have this ability?

Tony Fiorillo thinks this may have something to do with the fact that dinosaurs were oviparous. Humans and today's terrestrial life on Earth are mostly viviparous, which allows dinosaurs to be not limited by the size of mammals.

After all, the time when mammals appeared was in the Cretaceous period, before that, dinosaurs had lived on the earth for hundreds of millions of years, and mammals have been oppressed by dinosaurs for a long time in evolution, and there is no way to make their body size huge, which leads to the mammalian bone trabeculae do not have a special ability like dinosaurs, which will not disappear.

Scientists said that through the study of dinosaur bone trabeculae, the future may help human beings to have new breakthroughs in the field of construction, for example, it can create bridges with stronger bearing capacity and lighter weight, and at the same time, the safety factor is also higher, so as to truly benefit mankind, let's wait and see!