Dinosaurs lived during what is known as the Mesozoic Era which, when seen in the context of the entire history of life on Earth, comprises a very small part of that immense, 3.6 billion year, sweep of time. You might have to agree that it would be neglectful to ignore this amazing story of how life evolved, how tiny organisms changed the atmosphere to make a world that we could inhabit. Read on to find out more >>>
Life has been around for at least 3.6 billion years. There is some evidence to suggest that life stretches back even further to 4.2 billion years. Some scientists dispute this date, but most can agree that the origins of life can be confidently bolted down to at least 3.6 billion years ago. This is an exceptionally long-time span – so long that we as humans can barely wrap our heads around its enormity. Geologists call it ‘deep time’. In comparison to those time scales, dinosaurs arrived very late in the day, showing up around 230 million years ago and going extinct when an asteroid crashed into our planet 66 million years ago.
Algal mats called Stromatolites date back 3.4 billion years (Image: Wikipedia 2023)
It is one of the most amazing stories ever told
Dinosaurs lived during what is known as the Mesozoic Era which, when seen in the context of the entire history of life on Earth, comprises a very small part of that immense, 3.6 billion year sweep of time. You will have to agree that it would be neglectful to ignore this amazing story of how life evolved, how tiny organisms changed the atmosphere to make a world that we could inhabit. That is an amazing story which we will cover here at the DinoZone. Those single-celled bacteria evolved into more and more complex organisms, until some 600 million years ago three types of organisms evolved: shelled animals like clams and sea snails, radially symmetrical creatures like sea urchins and starfish, and elongated creatures with segmented bodies such as shrimps and lobsters.
Some of our favourite creatures
These amazing creatures lived on our planet way before the dinosaurs. Some of our favourite creatures from the Cambrian, a geological period stretching from 541 to 485 million years ago, are the Trilobites - small arthropods related to lobsters, which crawled around the ocean floor in their tens of thousands, hoovering up anything that was edible.
A trilobite from the Cabrian Period
life was just scrabbling for a toe-hold
Another wonderful animal is the horseshoe crab which lived in the oceans 400 million years ago, and filtered out food from the sea bed exactly as their descendants do to this day. Jawless fish patrolled the deeps of the oceans during the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian Periods at a time when life was just scrabbling for a toe-hold on land. Later, during the Permian, creatures called Therapsids dominated the land, with monsters such as Gorgonopsians filling the role of apex predator, just as Tyrannosaurus rex filled the same role during the later Cretaceous Period.
A Gorgonopsian, the apex predator of the Permian
Pulling together the golden strands of this amazing story
However, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves – what is for certain is that this story is so vast, so complex and so amazing that it is going to take much more than this introduction to tell it all. This is our aim at the DinoZone – to tell this story of Earth and life. We will start out by focussing on the dinosaurs, but we shall pull the golden strands of this amazing story into a larger whole, with dinosaurs at the centre to fire the imaginations and keep the interest going.
A Gorgosaurus
And seeing that you are here, grab yourself a copy of our free colouring book, which is full of wonderful dinosaurs and other Mesozoic creatures for you to bring back to life.
Get the DinoZone Free Colouring Book
Hours of creative fun for all the kids in your world. Splash colour across the Mesozoic to make it your own.
