Misconceptions about Dinosaurs - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep. 22)

Hey, I'm Elliot, and this is Mental Floss on YouTube

Today, I'm going to talk about some misconceptions about dinosaurs. Misconception number one, dinosaurs were the first reptiles

Actually, reptiles are older than dinosaurs. Experts believe that the earliest reptiles emerged between 320 and 310 million years ago

during the Carboniferous period. Dinosaurs came about later than that, around 231.4 million years ago during the Triassic period

One of these early reptiles was the Cassinaria, which was about 15 centimeters long and had some amphibian characteristics in addition to reptilian ones

Freak. That brings me to misconception number two. All ancient reptiles were dinosaurs

Here are some ancient reptiles that are not dinosaurs. There are also a lot of ancient flying reptiles, which many people still believe were dinosaurs, like the Pteranodon

Then, of course, I'm sure you've heard of the famous pterodactyl, which is not a term

that you'll hear dinosaur experts use. In the media, the term is used interchangeably

with pterosaur, which is the proper term for the flying reptiles who lived during the Triassic

period through the Cretaceous period. But whatever term you use, they were not dinosaurs

Misconception number three dinosaur means terrible lizard The term dinosaur was coined by Richard Owen in 1842 Originally he intended for it to mean fearfully great lizard

People have simplified it to mean terrible over time, but that's not totally accurate

It's also worth noting that dinosaurs are not lizards. They make up their own distinct group, but scientists classify them as reptiles

Misconception number four, the T. rex had tiny arms. It might look like the T. rex has small arms in modern depictions

especially compared to its huge body. But since the dinosaur stood about 18 feet tall, that means its arms were around 3 feet long

The publication Popular Science has estimated that the dinosaur could curl 430 pounds, or around 195 kilos

A human's absolute maximum is around 260 pounds, or 118 kilos. My maximum is about 25

Misconception number five, the Brontosaurus was a dinosaur. Brontosaurus is not the correct name, and we can blame this whole misconception on a late 19th century paleontologist named O.C. Marsh

He had been competing with another paleontologist, Edward Drinker Cope, to identify dinosaurs and get those identifications published

So in 1877, when Marsh discovered an incomplete skeleton of an Apatosaurus, he was thrilled and published it

Two years later his team found a more complete skeleton and he figured it was a different dinosaur altogether which he named Brontosaurus But because Apatosaurus came first that gets the proper name Misconception number six dinosaurs all had scales So it turns out that dinosaurs might not have looked exactly like the ones in Jurassic Park

I know, it's very disappointing. As of 2014, experts believe that all dinosaurs had feathers or the ability to sprout them

After a group of paleontologists discovered five distinct feathered species of dinosaurs in China

they published an article claiming that all dinosaurs shared an ancestor that was also feathered

They probably did have scaly skin like we imagined, but that skin was covered in feathers

It's crazy. Misconception number seven. Dinosaurs all coexisted and then died out together

Actually, a lot of time separated certain species of dinosaurs. And by a lot of time, I mean millions of years

According to the National Museum of Natural History, the distance in time between Tyrannosaurus and Apatosaurus

is more than the time between Tyrannosaurus and your parents. About 65 million years

Of the approximately 900 named species of Mesozoic dinosaurs, only two or three dozen

species faced the final extinction in North America. Misconception number eight, dinosaurs did not live amongst mammals

There were proto-mammals long before the dinosaurs showed up. Mammals evolved from those species and showed up in the late Triassic period almost simultaneously

with dinosaurs. But these early mammals were probably pretty small like the size of mice Speaking of mammals misconception number nine mammals killed the dinosaurs Some believe that the dinosaurs went extinct because mammals ate all of their eggs

We can't know for sure that this isn't true, but experts don't find the argument very convincing

First of all, if dinosaur eggs were the primary source of early mammals' food, then they would have gone extinct along with the dinosaurs because they wouldn't have had anything left to eat

Secondly, there are modern-day mammals that eat eggs daily, but we've never seen another species going extinct because of it

Thirdly, mammals had already been eating dinosaur eggs for millions of years before the dinosaurs went extinct

They probably would have gone extinct sooner if this was the problem. Misconception number ten, the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid

Towards the end of the Cretaceous period, an asteroid probably hit the Earth, causing an earthquake 1,000 times bigger than anything humans have ever recorded

It's possible that this did cause the extinction of dinosaurs, but paleontologists still aren't sure

A lot of them believe the dinosaurs were already on the decline thanks to a lack of diversity

so the asteroid just moved their already inevitable extinction right along. Thank you so much for watching Misconceptions on Mental Floss on YouTube

which is made with the help of all of these nice people. If you have a topic for an upcoming Misconceptions episode that you would like to see

leave it in the comments, and we'll see you next week. Bye