Written by: Ryan Krishna
Before moving into my favorite prehistoric creatures, it is useful to clear up one distinction: not every large prehistoric reptile, even some of the ones that ended in “-saur,” was a dinosaur. Dinosaurs were a specific group of reptiles, while pterosaurs were flying reptiles and plesiosaurs were marine reptiles. Birds make this more complicated in quite an interesting way. Modern birds are living dinosaurs because they descended from theropods, a group of mostly two-legged dinosaurs that included animals like Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus rex. This connection is evolutionarily supported by shared features like feathers, hollow bones, wishbones, nesting behaviors, and other skeletal similarities. So while several creatures within this post sit outside Dinosauria, they still belong to the larger prehistoric world that shapes everything we think of when we hear the word “prehistoric.”
Consider the plesiosaur, one of my favorite animals from the Mesozoic Era. It had a long neck, small head, broad body, and four flippers. What makes the plesiosaur especially compelling is its movement. Scientists have studied how its flippers worked together underwater, finding that the front limbs likely produced power while the back limbs added thrust, stability, or steering. A marine reptile moving through ancient oceans as if it were flying.
Dilophosaurus is another good example. Many people know it through Jurassic Park, where it spits venom and opens a wide, dramatic frill. Although the fossil record does not show evidence for either of these traits, the real animal is still interesting on its own. Its paired skull crests were thin bony structures that may have been used for display, species recognition, or signaling rather than fighting. To me, that is more exciting than the movie version: Dilophosaurus was not just a dinosaur with random scary features added, but a dinosaur with highly specialized physiology behind its already functional anatomy.
Velociraptor is another animal where the movie version can get in the way of the real one. It is often imagined as a medium-sized, scaly predator, but the actual animal was smaller and feathered. Scientists have found quill knobs on a Velociraptor forearm fossil, which gives direct evidence that feathers belonged on this dinosaur. The Velociraptor is therefore likely to have been a fast, birdlike predator, which makes the connection between dinosaurs and modern birds even more explicit.
Pterosaurs are also worth separating from the usual idea of dinosaurs, since they were not dinosaurs at all. They were flying reptiles, and they were in fact the first vertebrates to achieve powered flight. Their wings were supported by an extremely long fourth finger, with a broad membrane stretching from the body. Pterosaurs are intriguing to me because they show how varied the successful evolution of flight can be. Birds developed one version of flight, bats developed another, and pterosaurs had their own very unique method.
Microraptors are some of the coolest to imagine. They were small, feathered dinosaurs with long feathers on both their front and back limbs, which made them seem like they had four wings. Fossil evidence also suggests that their feathers may have been black with an iridescent sheen, similar to some modern birds. These animals are extremely interesting, as they seem to have been adept at several categories of movement at once: running, climbing, gliding, and perhaps even flying.
How does this connect to Long River Review? Well recently we adopted our new mascot/emblem, Harry the Heron. And although a heron is not prehistoric in the usual sense, birds clearly carry a much more ancient history than any of us would expect. Since modern birds are living dinosaurs, even an ordinary bird is connected to the same evolutionary story as animals like Velociraptors and Microraptors. So our friend Harry, though he may not be prehistoric himself, is much closer to that world than he first appears, and his history deserves to be acknowledged.
In closing, these prehistoric species are fascinating because each one shows a different way life has managed to exist. They lived in oceans, on land, in trees, and in the air, and none of them fit into one simple image of “prehistoric life.” Plesiosaurs, Dilophosaurus, velociraptors, pterosaurs, and microraptors all show how strange and specific the ancient world really was. Learning about these creatures links us to the animals that lived long before us, especially now that Harry the Heron gives us a small reminder that this history is still very much with us today.
Featured Image Caption: A selection of Late Cretaceous dinosaurs, showing some of the different forms they took, from armored Ankylosaurus to Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, and smaller feathered species.
Sources:
What is and is not a dinosaur? | AMNH
Plesiosaur | Natural History Museum
Plesiosaurs: The Long-Necked Lords of the Mesozoic Seas – FossilEra.com
Dilophosaurus | Natural History Museum
Jurassic Park vs Paleontology (5) | Images :: Behance
Feather quill knobs in the dinosaur Velociraptor | PubMed
Why a Pterosaur is Not a Dinosaur
