Amazing Animals: Dinosaur Quiz

Estimated Completion Time
1 min
Amazing Animals: Dinosaur Quiz
Image: Andrew Bret Wallis/The Image Bank/Getty Images

About This Quiz

About 60 million years ago, something happened to wipe dinosaurs off the face of the Earth. These creatures dominated the landscape far longer than humans have been around, but many mysteries remain about their appearance, physiology and eventual extinction. So which of today's animals evolved from dinosaurs?
Which of the following is directly related to dinosaurs?
Labrador retriever
flamingo
giraffe
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

The prevailing scientific view is that whether you're seeing a hummingbird, a robin, a flamingo or any other type of bird, you're seeing a descendant of dinosaurs.

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In what era did dinosaurs live?
Mesozoic
Paleozoic
Cenozoic
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Dinosaurs were a group of land animals that lived about 230 million years ago until about 60 million years ago. This spans the era of Earth's history known as the Mesozoic era, which includes the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

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Which of the following is not a common dinosaur trait?
walking with an upright gait
using fins instead of limbs
living on land
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Dinosaurs had four limbs, although some of them walked on just two legs.

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Which features of a dinosaur fossil indicate that it had feathers?
pinholes
small bumps
feather imprints
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Bumps, called quill barbs, on the bones mean the dinosaur had feathers -- some Velociraptor specimens have these barbs.

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Which type of medical technology do some researchers use to examine the interiors of dinosaur fossils?
CAT scan
MRI
X-ray
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

With computerized axial tomography (CAT) or CT scans, scientists can get a detailed view of inaccessible parts of skulls and other bones.

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What is the K-T boundary?
The geographical line of Pangea that denoted dinosaur habitats.
The point in time when dinosaurs became extinct.
The geographical point that paleontologists use to map where dinosaur fossils are found.
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

A popular theory that explains the extinction of dinosaurs at the K-T boundary -- the Alvarez theory -- states that an asteroid may have hit the Earth, causing massive shock waves, debris clouds and devastation. That impact, combined with geological changes and volcanic eruptions, most likely led to extinction of dinosaurs and about 50 percent of other species on Earth.

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What is one predominant question scientists have not entirely agreed upon about dinosaurs?
Did dinosaurs lay eggs?
When exactly did dinosaurs become extinct?
Were dinosaurs cold- or warm-blooded?
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

One lingering question, which encompasses several smaller questions, is whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded, like birds and mammals, or cold-blooded, like reptiles.

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Which group of dinosaurs evolved into birds?
pterosaurs
sauropods
theropods
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

The dinosaurs that evolved into birds are theropods -- the three-toed dinosaurs that include Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor. Ironically, these are members of the saurischian, or lizard-hipped, subgroup, rather than the ornithischian, or bird-hipped, group.

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Which factor likely had the greatest influence on the extinction of dinosaurs?
pollen from flowering plants
asteroid impact
mammals eating dinosaur eggs
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

A popular theory for the extinction of dinosaurs, the Alvarez theory states that an asteroid may have hit the Earth, causing mass extinctions.

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Which of the following prehistoric animals technically was not a dinosaur?
Tyrannosaurus rex
pterodactyl
stegosaurus
Correct Answer
Wrong Answer

Many of the most well-known prehistoric reptiles, like the pterodactyl, aren't dinosaurs since dinosaurs must technically be four-legged land animals.

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You Got:
/10
Andrew Bret Wallis/The Image Bank/Getty Images