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Mental Floss

DINOSAURS

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Perhaps more than any other dinosaur, Iguanodon reveals how dramatically our perception of these amazing creatures has evolved—while reminding us how much we’ve yet to learn.

Mark Mancini
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If T. rex is the Citizen Kane of dinosaurs, Therizinosaurus and its kin are The Rocky Horror Picture Show: They’re strange-looking, slightly threatening, and command a dedicated fan base. Here’s some trivia guaranteed to impress your fossil-loving amigos.

Mark Mancini

Coelophysis was but a humble player in an ecosystem teeming with strange and wonderful creatures. Yet this early dino proved to be remarkably successful, leaving not only a treasure trove of fossils in its wake, but also a hunter’s-eye look at the world i

Mark Mancini

Scarcity attracts people. What’s common is often ignored, overshadowed by the exotic and unusual. But sometimes—as this week’s featured dinosaur demonstrates—familiar things can teach us far more than the rarest of the rare.

Mark Mancini

Whenever Ankylosaurus is mentioned—in basic cable documentaries, cheap time-travel novels, or elsewhere—you might as well just start counting the seconds until somebody inevitably compares it to a tank. Equipped with defensive plating and a formidable tai

Mark Mancini
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Leaellynasaura may seem like an unassuming little creature, but it tells a remarkable story—one that involves drifting continents, a snowy wonderland, and the world’s luckiest little girl. Here’s a quick crash course on this dino from Down Under.

Mark Mancini

Diplodocus ranks among the most impressive animals that’s ever walked the earth and, thanks to a great philanthropist, it’s also become one of the world’s favorite dinosaurs. So, let’s get a little better acquainted with this captivating creature.

Mark Mancini
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Forget those sluggish tail-draggers you’ve seen plodding through old cartoons—in the real world, many dinosaurs lived fast and died young. Meet Allosaurus, a fearsome hunter with a knack for war wounds.

Mark Mancini
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Flashy frills. Clubbed tails. Teeth the size of bananas. With strange features like these, it’s tempting to think that dinosaurs must’ve inhabited some distant, alien world. But their planet was ours. They roamed our land, they breathed our air. And, as P

Mark Mancini
Getty Images

The word “dinosaur” wasn’t invented until 1842, but people have been stumbling across their bones for centuries, and possibly even millennia! It’s fitting, then, that Plateosaurus—one of the planet’s earliest dinos—was also among the first to be discovere

Mark Mancini
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Evolution is a marvelous thing. When Archaeopteryx was first discovered, it put a major feather in Darwin’s cap. Today, this raven-sized critter remains one of the most important—and controversial—dinosaurs ever found.

Mark Mancini
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