Dinosaur Biomes

Hey everyone, I know I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been busy with stuff. Anyway, today I want to talk to you guys about dinosaur biomes. To all who don’t know, a biome is a certain type of environment in which an ecosystem of organisms live. Now, biomes today include ice caps, but in dinosaur times ice caps didn’t exist. In the dinosaur times the coldest places were biomes called the taiga. A taiga is the type of biome that most of Alaska and Canada is. It has a mild summer, but a harsh and cold winter. Antarctica millions of years ago would’ve only been a taiga, simply because it was farther north than it is today.

Now let’s talk about Mongolia. When I say Mongolia, the Gobi Desert should come to mind. And that should bring visions of no water and extremely dry and hot conditions to mind. Well, during the Late Cretaceous, it was not desert. It was still hot and dry, but it wasn’t a desert. No, sir, it was a grassland. Grasslands are known by many names; plains or prairie in the US, steppes in China, etc. Let’s just call this biome the prairie, since I live in the US and am accustomed to this. Anyway, the Mongolian grassland wasn’t as dry as the desert that now exists in most of Mongolia. In fact, it had much more water back then than it does now. Creatures there would be adapted to a hot and semi-arid climate. Creatures there included the infamous Velociraptor, the famous Protoceratops and many other very famous dinosaurs. These dinosaurs and more were discovered by Roy Chapman Andrews, who made several different expeditions to the Mongolian badlands. But I’m getting off-topic, so let’s talk about Africa next.

When you think of Africa, you either think of the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, or you think of exotic animals such as lions. Back during the Age of Dinosaurs, Egypt was a grassland; in fact, it was a grassland even 3,000 years ago! Anyway, dinosaurs in this biome would be adapted to a warm climate. They included Spinosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus and many more dinosaurs.

What about the US? I think the biggest changes have occurred in Utah. Utah was mostly covered by a sea in the Triassic Period, and throughout most of the Jurassic Period. Then, the sea dried up and Utah was open for dinosaurs to come along. Dinosaurs in Late Jurassic Utah would’ve lived in a deciduous forest biome; that is, a forest whose trees shed their leaves every fall. Also there may have been some arid and desert regions of Late Jurassic Utah. Early Cretaceous Utah had more deserts, and creatures from this time included Utahraptor, the world’s largest raptor, and Gastonia, an ankylosaurid.

Ancient Europe doesn’t have very many dinosaurs, since much of it was underwater, but there are some from the Cretaceous Period. For example, Iguanodon is a famous one. Another one quite famous is Megalosaurus. Contrary to popular belief, Megalosaurus was the first named dinosaur, not Iguanodon.

I hope you enjoyed this post!

Random Scientist Inc.