Rafferty J.P. The Mesozoic Era: Age of Dinosaurs

Britannica Educational Publishing, 2010. — 285 p. — ISBN: 1615301038.It was a time of huge "thunder lizards" roaming steamy fern jungles; of "mammal-reptiles" walking the land of Laurasia; of continental movements, mountain building, and massive volcanoes; and a time of the most horrific, earth-shattering extinctions that ever occurred on this planet.
It was the middle times of what is called the Phanerozoic Eon, a geologic interval lasting almost a half billion years. It was the time of the dinosaursand much, much more. We call this time the Mesozoic Era.
Dinosaurs. The word itself immediately calls to mind large, predatory reptiles stalking the Earth. As young and old alike experience such visual, visceral responses to the word, it is difficult to believe that a mere 200 years ago, no one had any idea that these creatures had ever existed.
This book takes readers back to that point of discovery and classification, when English anatomist Sir Richard Owen first attempted to classify strange bones found in his country. And discoveries continue. Readers will learn about new and contradictory ideas of what the dinosaurs were- and were not. Were they cold-blooded? Did they all vanish in an extinction? The answers might surprise you.
Dinosaurs were the dominant life form of the Mesozoic Era. Each period within that era had a different variety of these amazing creatures, but all can generally be assigned to one of two major groups: Saurischia ("lizard hips") or Ornithischia ("bird hips"). Those in the Saurischia group belong to either the Sauropodomorpha subgroup, which consist of herbivores, or the Theropoda subgroup, the carnivores. Examples of the first subgroup would include the Brontosaurs, an out-of-date term, but one which many people can identify as the massive long-necked leaf-eater of cartoons. These animals could reach 30 metres (100 feet) in length and weigh in excess of 70 metric tons.