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    Dinosaurs

    Team » Dinosaurs appears in 2313 issues.

    The most diverse group of prehistoric reptiles that ruled the Earth many millions of years ago. Dinosaurs come in various shapes and sizes ranging from being smaller than a chicken to being bigger than the largest whales. Scientists have discovered thousands of different species that had dominated the world during the Mesozoic Era with their descendants, the birds still alive today.

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    Overview

    Dinosaurs are not a comic book team, rather a classification of animals. They are a diverse group of prehistoric reptiles that walked the earth millions of years ago before becoming extinct. Dinosaurs have been featured in both fiction such as movies and TV shows as well as non-fiction in documentaries.

    Depiction in Fiction

    Dinosaur fossils have been found by human civilizations since the dawn of our own history, but their scientific explanation baffled their discoverers until the modern day. The fossils had previously used to prove the existence of numerous mythical creatures including dragons. Near the beginning of the twentieth century, the first scientific hypotheses were put forward which have formed the basis of those of the modern day. However, the hypotheses have evolved over time. With the advent of comic books in the early part of the 20th century, the subject of dinosaurs provided a fertile one for the telling of adventures (the earliest comics generally told adventure stories before superheroes were introduced). With only a rough understanding of the science, early writers began to incorporate them into their stories.

    Two types of stories persisted, those of creatures that had traveled through time, or those of ancient humans that encountered them. The interaction of humans and dinosaurs is obviously not possible and an anachronism with dinosaurs having been dominant on Earth tens of millions of years ago, while humans have existed in their modern state since approximately 100,000 years. With the gradual creeping in of science into the field of comics (especially true with the beginning of the silver age in the 1960s), the human interaction with dinosaurs was changed to generally those dinosaurs that had survived the global cataclysm which had destroyed them.

    Thus areas such as Dinosaur Island became possible as a location out of space and time (such concepts of dinosaurs did occur earlier, such as in Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World.) the only major change to the depiction of dinosaurs in comics (and in pop culture) has been with the popularity of Jurassic Park. In these stories scientists have discovered dinosaur DNA in fossilized amber and after extracting it were able to clone living animals from it. This is a very specific concept though and doesn't generally affect the depiction of the animals overall.

    Physiology

    Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals that are strictly land-based creatures. Flying reptiles known as Pterosaurs are often misconceived as dinosaurs too though they are a group of their own. Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Pliosaurs and Mosasaurs are often thought of sea dinosaurs however they belong to a group classified as Marine Reptiles.

    Dinosaurs are divided into two types, the bird-hipped ornithiscians and the lizard-hipped saurischians. The ornithiscians mainly include the bipedal herbivorous ornithopods as well as armored dinosaurs such as stegosaurus and triceratops. The saurischians mainly include the giant long-necked sauropods and the flesh-eating theropods.

    Dinosaur Species seen in Media

    • Albertasaurus
    • Allosaurus
    • Apatasaurus
    • Brachiosaurus
    • Baryonyx
    • Ceratosaurus
    • Dilophosaurus
    • Gallimimus
    • Giganotosaurus
    • Parasaurolophus
    • Pteranodon
    • Spinosaurus
    • Stegosaurus
    • Torosaurus
    • Triceratops
    • Troodon
    • Tyrannosaurus Rex
    • Velociraptor

    Famous Examples

    Marvel

    Dinosaurs in the Marvel Universe have been seen in the Savage Land. A tropical jungle infested with a variety of prehistoric life forms including primal humans but also dinosaurs. There are dinosaur characters like Devil Dinosaur, and characters with dinosaur based powers such as Reptil and Sauron.

    DC

    Famous examples of dinosaurs in DC are Dinosaur Island and those found in Skartaris.

    Turok

    Turok often interacts with dinosaurs in the course of his adventures.

    Jurassic Park

    Dinosaurs have been the genetic creation of Ingen in which their DNA was discovered and through DNA mixing with other species of animals (in this case toads) gave them life and were to be used as attractions at Jurassic Park. However the attraction didn't go as planned and the dinosaurs escaped and went on a murderous rampage. Despite being wildly popular in modern culture, Jurassic Park has never been particularly popular in comics. Jurassic World introduces a new concept and new hybrid.

    King Kong

    The mysterious world of Skull Island has been inhabited by prehistoric monsters that should have died out millions of years ago yet survive, dinosaurs being the most numerous. Many of them are the evolved descendants of the great reptiles that once dominated the earth, being stronger, larger, faster and more dangerous than ever.

    Ice Age

    Dinosaurs were revealed to have survived their extinction catastrophic in a world beneath that of the surface. They are particularly much larger than they usually should be.

    Primeval

    This TV series features creatures from both past and future stumbling into the present that need to be contained and sent back to their time. Amongst these creatures are prehistoric dinosaurs.

    Godzilla

    The famous King of Monsters in Japanese Toho features many colossal beasts, some of which are dinosaur in appearance.

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