are dinosaurs extinct or have they evolved to the present day animals?
94601
they beleive aligators and crockodiles  have remained unchanged for 1,000's of years.  not to mention all those bottom feeder fish in the middle of the ocean.
207254
As a late development of the dinosaurs Archeopteryx would have come extinct at the Cretaceous-tertiary boundary about\n66 million years ago (when all dinasaurs became extinct)the cause was a large asteroid that hit he earth off Yucatan in Mexico causing cataclysmic environmental changes.\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx
852285
For hundred of years, bones were found in China, labelled "dragon bones" ground to a poweder and used as folk remedies. Discovering a dinosaur bone was not hard, identifying such bones as being from a disappeared animal required a bit more imagination, running against the "teaching" of religious beliefs.\nThe first full dinosaur skeleton discovered which was recognized as such, occured in 1858, 148 years ago (see link).\n\nAs to the number of dinosaur spieces, it must have been nearly one million.  There are 5500 species of mammals alive today, and most of them are less than one million year old (the ancestor of those mammals living today disappared, along with some speices that dies off without leaving descendants). If one assumes that dinosaurs occupied essentially all the ecological niche that mamallians do today (there were tiny dinosaurs the size of mouse, no all dinosaurs were huge) and given that dinosaurs lived and ruled the Earth from 230 million years ago until 65 million years ago (so 165 million years), and assuming that a speice lasts one million years, that is about one million indeed.\nWe will never find them all, many dinosaurs may have disappered without leaving traces that we will ever find.
761767
Birds evolved from a group of therapod dinosaurs. "Transitional fossils " do exist, the most famous been the Jurassic  Archaeopteryx, which had a teeth like and a long bony tail a reptile, but feathers like a bird. Beautifully preserved specimens have been found in fine grained  Solnhofen limestones in Germany .
391353
fossil evedence of what?  that you came from a monkey?  I did not evolve that way.  We belive there was a flood, we belive in dinosaurs so the fossils pose no problem we just don't belive that we came from monkeys so yes we can go to natrual history musuems, i have visited quite a few with my church by the way
634900
1) A mass extinction is an across the board extinction of many species, genre, and phylum. The most famous was the dinosaurs, not one survived. There were many species and genera that did not make it. The dinosaurs were not the only ones who perished in this mass extinction event.\n2) Second part is that it occurs in a relatively short period  of geologic time (few million years or shorter). \nWe do not know what caused the mass extinction in the past.\nA less significant extinction would have less groups involved, for example just a few species of a genre but most survive. \n We  can only speculate, we are pretty sure that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a major bolide impact about 60 million years ago off the ukitan peninsula. There is zircon found in concentrated amounts across the plants oceans witch is indicative of a bolide impact. Also about the same time there were major volcanic eruptions on the other side of the planet which is now India, the combination of the two, could have caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Be careful when you watch science shows on NOVA or Discovery, a lot of the time they make scientific theory out to be a proven fact.
369716
Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.\n\nDinosaurs were not wiped out by a meteorite or a planetary catastrophe but by a serious flatulence problem. Dinosaur wind contained a high proportion of methane gas - powerful enough to penetrate the ozone layer. \n\n"The animals, weighing from 80 to 100 tonnes, would eat on average between 130 and 260 kilos of food every day. They would fart non-stop." \n\n\nDinosaurs became extinct after more than 160 million years on earth\n \nDuring the dinosaurs' time on earth "the atmosphere became charged with methane, which finally damaged the ozone layer and brought about great changes in the vegetation." \n\nThe changes caused a food shortage which eventually wiped them out. \n\nThe ozone layer protects the atmosphere from the sun's ultra-violet rays. \n\nThere are numerous theories as to why dinosaurs died out. \n\nThe most common are: \n\n\nTheir was a Plague of Caterpillars that ate all the vegetatian\n\nDinosaur AIDS\n\nThey all developed cataracts and couldn't see where they were in order to eat\n\n\nWho Knows?
26194
"they" don't because they don't really know.  when early paleontologists started reconstructing dinosaur fossils, there was not much known about forensic biology.  our understanding of the way bones fit together and the biomechanics of all those little bumps and ridges on the bones was not very complete, and so when the skeletons were reconstructed they ended looking more like lizards than birds, mostly due to the missing information being filled in by the early scientists' prejudices and assumptions.\n\na lot of the recent work on dinosaurs that asserts their bird-like characteristics (feathers, warm blooded, etc) are inferred from the bone structure and are pretty far-removed from the physical evidence.  the notion that dinosaurs are like birds is controversial because it's new, and all people (including scientists) take time to accept something that upsets the conventional wisdom.  it is good science and probably correct, but without any direct evidence it is pretty well impossible to know for sure.\n\nhowever some very-detailed fossils discovered recently in china appear to actually have feathers!  so this is pretty exciting and very good evidence for the notion of birdlike dinosaurs.  nevertheless people remain a) reluctant to change their views and b) uninformed about recent developments in paleontology.  most folks in the public are informed by books from their childhood and movies like 'jurassic park'.  the public takes a long time to come around to new discoveries in science, particularly when they challenge older models and when a field is changing rapidly.  it is also considered fairly irresponsible to present a controversial and barely-tested theory as "fact" by journalists and museum curators.  when the controversy in the scientific community settles down and a consensus is reached, then public education in museums and articles can begin and popular belief will change.
376586
A. Could we have real dinosaurs somewhere?\nAs ttocsewol pointed out, the biggest problem of cryptozoology is that there is not enough space to hide thousands of dinosaurs. If there are fewer, the species is quite vulnerable to extinction.\nOne exception: there is enough space in the ocean. We have just recently discovered some pretty large shark species. However, this means that the dinosaur in question has to be giving birth rather than laying eggs, much like Ichtyosaurus dis. However, marine reptiles of Mesosoic era (Plesiosaurs, Mesozaurs, Ichtyosaurs and so on) are not dinosaurs in strict sense of the word, but are distantly replated to them.\n\nB. Living descendants and relatives of dinosaurs.\nTurtles, crocodiles, lizards and other surviving reptiles are also quite removed relatives of dinosaurs. Birds, however, are direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs.\nBe careful around that chicken.
166929
>>>> Are some of todays birds direct descendants of dinosaurs?\n\nNo, ALL of todays birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs. It would be impossible for just some of them to be descendants.\n\n>>>>one example?\n\n\nAn example of what? An example of a bird?\nA crimson macaw.\nThat's a good example of a bird. You can defintitely tell it's a bird. Beak, two scaly legs, feathers. Yep, a crimson macaw is a bird all right.
3961
No. This is because Dinosaurs died out around 65 Million years ago. The bible refers to events in the last few thousand years. According to fundementalist christians the world was created 4000 years ago. The are even building a museum in America which shows Dinosaurs living side by side with humans. THIS IS NOT CORRECT AND IS INSANE TO BELIEVE. There was a programme on the BBC on this museum a few days ago which showed one of those big horned dinosaurs with a sadlle on which gave me a good laugh! I think their reason for the Dinosaurs not surviving the flood was that they couldn't fit on the ark, which also gave me a good laugh ;)
380528
Dinosaurs were vertebrate animals that dominated the terrestrial ecosystem for over 160 million years, first appearing approximately 230 million years ago. At the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, dinosaurs suffered a catastrophic extinction, which ended their dominance on land. Modern birds are considered to be the direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs.
725060
Whoa! slow down, there is fossil evidence a transition from reptiles and birds. Most famously Archeopteryx with reptilian skull, teeth, digits, claws, vertebrae, sternum, ribs, pelvis, tail, and mainly unfused bones, and a few bird traits like a wishbone, wings and feathers!! In older sediments, there are theropod dinosaurs with skeletal similarities to Archeopteryx. In younger sediments, there are several fossils with more birds-like traits, such as Sinornis and Shenzhouraptor and dozens more (wikipedia "fossil birds").\n\nFossils of scales and feathers are very very rarely preserved. Imprints of the Archeopteryx feathers are only preserved because the fossils are embedded in very rare, very fine limestone that used to be used in lithography. It is unreasonable to demand fossil evidence of a transition between scales and feathers. That said, there are several theropod fossils with feathers that have been recently discovered in a fine Chinese deposit, things like Sinosauropteryx, Caudipteryx and Beipiaosaurus.\n\nBut sure, every detail of the the transition from reptiles to birds isn't documented. Other than demanding an excessive amount of evidence, I really don't know what arguments you can use, I don't think there are any true ones. But you might find some convincing sounding ones on Creationist propaganda websites. It depends on your audience.
414778
T. rex (Tyrannosaurus rex) was a large, meat-eating therapod dinosaur that lived during the late Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era (about 70 to 65 million years ago).\n\nThere is no question that it ate meat, with huge steak-knife like teeth, binocular vision and other adaptations, but paleontologists have argued over whether or not it was a scavenger or active predator.\n\nMany of the proponents of each theory seem to forget that very very few animals are completely either/or.\n\nIn modern times, hyenas are considered scavengers while lions are generally considered top predators.  However, hyenas quite often kill their own prey, coopertating to take down wildebeest or zebras by themselves.  And lions often chase the hyenas off their kills, and scavenge the meal themselves.\n\nSo T. rex could indeed have been an active predator, hunting down or ambushing prey, but also could have been a scavenger, tracking down dead dinosaurs with its keen sense of smell, and it would have been well equipped to drive off almost any other predator that was already at the kill.  Even something as formiddable as a pack of Deinonychus probably would have backed off when T. rex came charging over the hill.\n\nThe fact that T. rex shows adaptations that could have been useful for either lifestyle says to me that they were probably flexible.  They may have acted primarily as scavengers in an area where other predators were common, but would have been able to become the dominant predator in other regions.  \n\nAnimals tend to be more complex than simply either/or statement.  Especially large, adaptable animals.  I think it's likely that T. rex was a predator in some regions, under some circumstances, and in other regions, with different circumstances it was primarily a scavenger.  Even the same animal may have changed its habits over the course of the year as it moved to different regions.
24541
We can't really prove it. All their insides were decayed, so the only evidence of them being reptiles is their bone structure. But for all we know, they could have been fuzzy, warm blooded, dinosaurs. There is no way to determine either way scientifically, because we can't see a live one.
217105
AD? you mean Anno Domini, animals that have gone extinct during the last 20 centuries? If that is the case, please answer (use the Add details option) and I'll provide a list. \nOff the top of my head: \nSteller's sea cow\nMoas\nDodos\nMarsupial wolf\nCalifornia parakeet\nFalklands fox
279918
Maverick is right. If you look at a cladogram (a graphic representation of the evolution of birds) you will see  polytomies (several branches that arise from a single node) indicating that some of the basal relationships of modern birds are not completely resolved. And anyway, all modern birds belong to the Neornithes (a subgroup of Aves), so they all have a common ancestor that was more recent than Archaeopteryx or non-avian dinosaurs. \nCladogram showing position of birds within dinosaurs:\nhttp://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Natural_Classification_of_Aves2.gif\nhttp://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/G104/birdorg2.jpg\n\nHere's another one showing the position of the major groups of modern birds (Palaeognatha, the large non-flying birds and the tinamous, and Neognatha, the rest of modern birds):\nhttp://www.usd.edu/biol/faculty/swanson/ornith/pics/phylogeny.gif\n\nThat said, there's a rare bird, the hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin), whose chicks have temporary claws on their hands (wings), which they use to climb and move about in trees. It does have an "ancient" look, although it is a modern bird, and some people have linked it with Archaeopteryx.