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For over 160 million years the dinosaurs ruled the world. The last of them died out 65 million years ago, many many years before the first human beings evolved about 2 million years ago. The word dinosaur means "terrible lizard".
What are the three dinosaur periods talked about in this site?
Dinosaurs lived on land. Some of them were so big that they would have been longer than ten parked cars, and could look over a three-storeyed house. Others were no bigger than a turkey. In between were all sorts of sizes and shapes.
Dinosaur bones were first collected in the early 1800's, and since then many skeletons have been found. Because it was very hard to tell what an animal looked like just from the bones, many mistakes were made, with people often thinking they had discovered a new kind of dinosaur. Today scientists believe there are only about 300 truly different species.
In this web site you can find out about some of these different kinds of dinosaur. Watch out though - not all of the animals shown in the site are dinosaurs! Can you find one?