Tag Archive | reptile

Zhejiangopterus

Yes, more dinosaurs… or rather not dinosaurs… enjoy my continuing deflation of any sort of pride in how caught up my blog is! But once it is… bam I will be on top of the world!!!

 

Now there is a mouthful! Pronounced ZHE-zhang-OP-ter-us (does that even really help much either?), this is not a dinosaur but a pterosaur found in the late Cretaceous period. Found in the coastal area of Asia (specifically China), this flying lizard subsisted mainly on a diet of fish. It was toothless and had an usually long head and neck without any sort of crest. Moderately large in stature it had extra long legs as well.

This flying reptile was impressive in size and number of unearthed portions as well as pretty much full skeletons. Quite the interesting character!

We have a few links of interest to share with this one:

  • Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
  • Prehistoric-Wildlife.com HERE
  • My Dino’s (title straight from site) HERE
  • Dino Dominion HERE
  • DinosaurFact.net HERE
  • Open Caching Beta HERE
  • Dinosaur Train Field Guide, just put the rather difficult to spell name into the search engine HERE
  • Dinosaur Train Wiki HERE
  • Wikipedia HERE
  • Our Google search for the images HERE
  • Our pictures is from deviantArt HERE thanks to Xezansaur called Zhejiangopterus Linhaiensis

Archelon… the Giant Sea Turtle

Ok do NOT ask how old this is (even though the date is right there… baaaad Lisa). I have decided to push through and post these crazily old posts now before I never get them up!! Hopefully our collection of links are helpful… and still active!!

For Emanuel’s (and now Trinity’s) first dinosaur of the 2013-2014 school year we actually went reptile… giant reptile with the Archelon turtle. This late Cretaceous period reptile was believed to be slow moving and only dove deep to hibernate. A Potential omnivore it spent its entire life in the ocean except to lay eggs. It is thought to be the predecessor to our current turtles.

What I found interesting was that it was soft shelled AND around during the END of the dinosaurs. And HUGE!!!

We watched a short independently made video about our reptile on youTube by Sarcosuchus7 titled Archelon The Biggest Turtle. 

And now for our link list:

  • BBC has some images and a blurb HERE
  • KidsDinos.com has their article HERE
  • EnchantedLearning has their information HERE
  • Animal a Day has a great fossil image HERE
  • Las Ecomujeres has a great article HERE
  • Euro Turtle has another great image HERE
  • Wiki as ever has their say HERE
  • And of course our colouring page from Super Coloring HERE

I hope these links are helpful!! Enjoy our turtle learning!

Lystrosaurus

You do NOT want to know how old these resource posts are!! EEP! But we did love every minute of our dino journey. Sadly I was not on the ball and pre-loading a cute kid pic for this one. BUT I hope the info comes in handy! 

The “shovel lizard” Lystrosaurus came to our attention strictly by looks! It straddles the reptile and mammal (like) groups with its unusual characteristics. This VERY successful animal was found all over the world. A herbivore, it was found in the early Triassic period with concentration of fossils in Southern Africa, Asia and interestingly enough… Antarctica! The size of a pig, it is stout and short… ran on four legs and quite the comical looking creature. You can also see this dinosaur on the iPad app Fantastic Dinosaurs HD.

Our video is called Walking With Monsters: Clumsy Lystrosaurus posted by Hritzness.

And for our links… for such a prolific dinosaur we really had a limited number!

  • Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
  • KidsDinos.com (which has the era for the dinosaur at a slightly odd place) HERE
  • Prehistoric Wildlife HERE
  • Animal a Day HERE
  • Wiki HERE
  • And our colouring page from Super Coloring HERE