Published by: DISCOVERY (Karma: 1711.74) on 20 January 2009 | Views: 2107
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This fully illustrated book examines the scientific view of dinosaurs as living creatures. Once considered docile and inactive - like their distant cold-blooded reptiles relatives - dinosaurs are now thought to have been active, energetic creatures that used a variety of methods to maintain a constant body temperature. The story of best-known dinosaurs is told in "Time of the Giants". The Middle and Late Jurassic Periods saw the largest land animals ever to walk the Earth - the sauropods. But the giants were not alone; other kinds of dinosaurs were diversifying rapidly as well. Most notably, predatory dinosaurs began their own trend towards gigantism, and the prolific development of plated and armored herbivores filled ecological spaces not tread upon by the long-necked behemoths. By the end of the Jurassic Period, dinosaurs represented extremism in the size of land animals with equally elegant metabolic and thermoregulatory mechanisms to maintain an active lifestyle. At the other end of the size scale, some small meat-eating dinosaurs, such as Archaeopteryx, developed powered flight and gave rise to birds.
