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•About 250 million years ago, most life on Earth went extinct, and within the next 10 million years or so, dinosaurs began to evolve. The exact timing of when dinosaurs entered the scene isn’t known, but we know it was between 230-245 million years ago.

•Dinosaurs evolved from reptiles that were about the size of house cats. These small, agile reptiles known as dinosauromorpha rapidly increased and spread across the world. They were too small to reach the top of the food chain, but were fast enough to escape predators long enough to evolve into dinosaurs.

•All birds are descendants of dinosaurs. While all the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct, the avian varieties evolved over the millennia into birds.

•Dinosaurs weren’t classified until 1842, but in 1815, a geologist came across a peculiar skeleton unlike any previously recorded. He named it “Megalosaurus,” which is Greek for “great lizard.” Seven years later, another geologist and his wife found a new iguana-like skeleton in Sussex, England, and named it “Iguanodon.” After more fossils turned up, Sir Richard Owen (who later founded London’s Natural History Museum) classified the fossils as belonging to the “dinosauria” family.

•Dinosaurs lived on every continent because at that time, the Earth’s continents were clustered together into one giant landmass called Pangaea. When Pangaea slowly drifted apart more than 165 million years ago, many dinosaur species were separated from one another.

•Most of the dinosaur fossils in the world are found in three places: the high-altitude badlands of China, Argentina and North America. While much of the world is covered in fossils, they’re easily unearthed in desert-like environments due to the lack of vegetation.

•The largest, most extensive and best preserved tyrannosaurus rex skeleton is nicknamed Sue, after American explorer Sue Hendrickson, who discovered it in 1990.