Dinosaur Bones

---> HOME

Dinosaurs were first discovered in the early 1800's, when people found large bones in the ground, and could not recognize what animal they came from. By looking at the age of the rocks the bones are found in, they worked out that these bones must have been millions of years old, and belonged to very different animals from those that exist today.

Looking at the bones, and studying how muscle and flesh is attached to bones in modern animals, scientists began to get an idea of how these animals may have looked.

Often they only had a few bones to guess what the dinosaur looked like, and many mistakes were made at first. It was like putting together big jigsaw puzzles!

The drawing below shows how we think the bones of this dinosaur went together, and what it might have looked like.


(back to top)