250 Amazing Facts: Dinosaurs, Maths, Money, Travel & the Mind

Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for around 165 million years.

Tyrannosaurus rex lived closer in time to humans than to Stegosaurus. Around 80 million years separated Stegosaurus and T. rex.

The word "dinosaur" was created in 1842 by British scientist Richard Owen. It means "terrible lizard."

When scientists studied proteins preserved in a T. rex bone in 2007, they found they were most similar to those of chickens.

The asteroid that wiped out most dinosaurs around 66 million years ago was about 10 kilometres wide and left a crater in Mexico more than 150 kilometres across.

Many dinosaurs had feathers, even some that couldn't fly.

Giant plant-eating dinosaurs called titanosaurs, such as Argentinosaurus, may have grown more than 30 metres long and weighed as much as 10 elephants.

Not all dinosaurs were huge. Compsognathus was roughly the size of a chicken.

Stegosaurus was as long as a bus, but its brain was only about the size of a lime.

T. rex had tiny arms, but they were powerful and could likely lift a couple of hundred kilograms.

Real velociraptors were about the size of a turkey and were covered in feathers.

Pterosaurs, the flying reptiles of the dinosaur age, weren't actually dinosaurs. The biggest, Quetzalcoatlus, had a wingspan of around 10 metres.

The giant sea reptiles of the dinosaur age, such as plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, weren't dinosaurs either.

Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent, including Antarctica.

Spinosaurus may have been longer than T. rex and probably spent much of its time hunting in water.

Some long-necked dinosaurs swallowed stones, which may have helped grind up food in their stomachs.

Megalosaurus, named in 1824, was the first dinosaur ever given a scientific name.

A dinosaur discovered in the USA was named Dracorex hogwartsia, after Hogwarts School from the Harry Potter books.

Sharks have existed for more than 400 million years, making them older than trees.

The ancestors of today's crocodiles lived alongside the dinosaurs.

Horseshoe crabs have existed in much the same form for around 450 million years.

The coelacanth, a fish thought to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs, was found alive off South Africa in 1938.

Around 300 million years ago, giant dragonfly-like insects called Meganeura had wingspans of around 70 centimetres.

Arthropleura, a giant prehistoric millipede, could grow to about 2.5 metres long.

Life on Earth began at least 3.5 billion years ago, with simple microbes in the oceans.

Woolly mammoths had small ears and short tails to help them lose less heat in the Ice Age cold.

The saber-toothed cat Smilodon had upper canine teeth that could reach about 18 centimetres long.

Humans and non-bird dinosaurs never lived at the same time. They were separated by around 66 million years.

Our species, Homo sapiens, has existed for about 300,000 years.

Many people alive today carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, passed down from ancient encounters between our ancestors.

Millions of years ago, India was an island that broke away from an ancient supercontinent and drifted north before crashing into Asia.

Fossils of sea creatures called ammonites are found high in the Himalayas, because those rocks once lay at the bottom of an ancient ocean.

The dodo, a flightless bird from Mauritius, was extinct by the late 1600s.

Passenger pigeons once flew in flocks of millions, but the last known one, named Martha, died in 1914.

The last known Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, died in a zoo in 1936.

Scientists study fossilised dinosaur poop, called coprolites, to learn what dinosaurs ate.

Scientists have worked out the colours of some dinosaurs by studying tiny pigment structures preserved in fossil feathers. One small dinosaur had a ginger-and-white striped tail.

Some dinosaur eggs were about the size of a football.

Brontosaurus was removed as a separate dinosaur for about a century, but scientists brought the name back in 2015.

Triceratops had hundreds of teeth arranged in rows, which were constantly replaced as they wore down.

Ankylosaurus was covered in bony armour and had a heavy club at the end of its tail.

Pachycephalosaurus had a dome of solid bone on top of its head, up to 25 centimetres thick.

Microraptor was a small dinosaur with feathered wings on both its arms and legs, giving it four wings.

The earliest known dinosaurs appeared around 230 million years ago.

The Jurassic period is named after the Jura Mountains on the border of France and Switzerland.