Platysaurus Dinosaur Facts

Video Transcript

"Now for two intriguing behemoths. First we have the Prosauropod, the Platyosaurus which means the flat lizard. He was in that original Triassic period, late Triassic. He stood about ten to twelve feet tall, ten to fifteen tons in weight. A friendly plant eater, and it's believed that he could stand upright, especially when he was foraging for food on trees. On the other hand, he could walk on all fours. He had powerful fore limbs here and please note that on each hand he had a very powerful thumb with a pointed nail. A sort of a claw. That had two purposes, to help him rip apart vegetation and also defend against predators. He also has something we don't see on many Dinosaurs, a dewlap or waddle of material here. We've seen them on some of the lizards, but this is one Dinosaur, and again perhaps because he's an early Dinosaur, that had that waddle or dewlap. Very attractive. Now we go to the Early Cretaceous Period. And we have a Pachycephalasaurus, which means the thick headed Dino. Again, another one stood about the same ten to twelve feet tall, ten to fifteen tons in weight. Another friendly vegetarian. but he's characterized by having a skull that was ten inches thick. The thickest skull of any Dino we've yet found. And if you could see here, he had a number of knobs around his head. And the question is, why this Dinosaur, what was the purpose of having such a thick skull? Well, it's believed that again, this is a Dinosaur that lived in herds and to achieve dominance, just as deer will buck against each other, these Dinos crashed into each other. And to protect their tiny brains, they had these thick skulls for protection. Certainly sounds reasonable to me. And again, another Dino that because he was eating so much vegetation, might have had Gastroliths in his stomach. That's a characteristic of course, of the later Sauropods."