Sunday Quiz | On dinosaurs
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On April 4, 1796, French zoologist Georges Cuvier gave the first public lecture on fossilised life forms at the opening of the National Institute. His paper was the first to theorise that African and Indian elephants were different species and that based on his studies of fossils there was once another species that must have become extinct. This talk led to the formation of a certain field that gets its name from three words in Greek, meaning ‘old, ancient’, ‘being, creature’ and ‘speech, thought, study’. What is this field that captures almost every child’s fancy?
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After the global success of the Jurassic Park franchise, the cloning of dinosaurs has become a running theme in popular culture. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the half-life of the most important molecule required for this process is 521 years. This means that the oldest clone-able samples of this molecule cannot be more than two million years old, which pretty much rules out any chance of replicating dinosaurs, the youngest of which lived more than 65 million years ago. What molecule has a half-life of 521 years?
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Apatosaurus was a huge dinosaur that had a long tail which was broad at the base and narrow at the tip. Recent computer models studying its behaviour revealed that it moved its tail like how one would use a particular old-fashioned weapon. This also led to the conclusion that the dinosaur could make a deafening noise just by cracking its tail. What weapon whose tip travels faster than the speed of sound does the tail resemble?
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During the Cretaceous period (145.5–66.5 million years ago), Earth’s climate was very warm and forests were everywhere, including in a place where plants and dinosaurs evolved to live in continuous sunlight in the summer and darkness in the winter.
Fossils of plant-eating dinosaurs such as Antarctopelta (an armored dinosaur) and Trinisaura have been discovered in Cretaceous rocks in this now-barren place. Which place is this?
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Although culturally people tend to divide dinosaurs into herbivores (plant-eaters) and carnivores (meat-eaters), paleontologists distinguish dinosaurs based on their hips. They divide them as being either saurischian or ornithischian dinosaurs. If ‘schian’ means hip, what do ‘sauri’ and ‘ornithi’ mean, which refers to the living relatives of these dinosaurs now?
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All reptiles are ‘ectothermic’ — this is based on the fact that they need to rely on the external environment to maintain internal body temperatures. All mammals are ‘endothermic’ meaning they can maintain a constant internal body temperature irrespective of external conditions. There’s solid proof that dinosaurs had both types and were not purely ectothermic as previously thought. What does ‘ectothermic’ mean, which sounds like the animal is a villain in a murder novel?
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Explorer Roy Chapman Andrews found the first dinosaur nest known to science in 1923.
He discovered the nest in a rain shadow desert formed by the Tibetan Plateau blocking the precipitation from the Indian Ocean. Which desert is this that is the second largest in Asia ?
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The first recorded description of a possible dinosaur bone discovery dates back to 3,500 years ago in a particular country.
At that time the local people thought their discovery, which was some dinosaur teeth, belonged to dragons.
Researchers believe that the prevalence of fossils in this country is partly responsible for the popularity of dragons in their culture. Which country is this where multiple different species have been discovered?
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Seismosaurus halli is considered to be the largest dinosaur to ever have existed. It rose to a height of 84 feet, 150 foot long and weighed 150 tonnes. Earlier another dinosaur called Argentinosaurus was considered to be the largest, weighing up to 100 tonnes. The largest animal to have ever existed, though, weighed 190 tonnes and was 110 feet long. What animal is this?
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Stegosaurus had 30-inch-tall upright plates on its back that researchers believe it used to control its body temperature by regulating blood flow through them. It is also thought to have been able to control its skin colour this way, to either attract a mate or scare predators. The term used for this in humans refers to the blood vessels in the face becoming wide and hence changing colour. What term is this?