Dinosaurs: Carnivores Trivia Quiz

Answer: Archaeopteryx

Archaeopteryx is the first known flying bird, but it would not have been a very efficient flyer because of its primitive skeleton and long tail. The chick of the hoatzin bird, which lives in Venezuela and Guyana, has claws on each wing that are very similar to archaeopteryx's. It uses them to climb and cling onto trees.

Answer: Carnotaurus

The eyebrow 'horns' of carnotaurus are a puzzling feature. They do not seem large or strong enough to be weapons, and in any case, this dinosaur was already a very large and powerful creature. The horns may have grown with maturity, indicating that the owner was adult and able to breed.

Answer: True

Dimetrodon had a tall, skinny fin - a bit like a sail - running along its backbone. This fin was formed by a row of long spines that grew out of separate vertebrae. Blood flowing inside this sail would have been warmed by the early morning sun and carried to the rest of the body. The sail could also have radiated heat, preventing overheating.

Answer: Sea Scorpion

Pterygotus, which was bigger than a human, was the largest arthropod (an animal with a segmented body and a hard outer skeleton) ever to have lived. They were not true scorpions, because their tail parts (called the opisthosoma) served as swimming paddles, not stinging weapons. Dolphins swim by beating their tails up and down - which is how palaeontologists think pterygotus swam.

Answer: Eustreptospondylus

In the 1850s, a fairly complete skeleton of a young eustreptospondylus was found near Wolvercote, Oxford, but was identified as a megalosaurus, the only other big meat eater known from the region. In 1964, British fossil expert Alick Walker showed that the Wolvercote dinosaur was not megalosaurus, and gave it a new name: eustreptospondylus.

Answer: Quetzalacoatlus

Quetzalocoatlus had a grand wingspan of 15 metres. A student, Douglas Lawson, discovered quetzalcoatlus' bones in the Big Bend National Park, Texas, in 1971. Pteranodon had a wingspan of 7 metres. Pteranodon had a long crest on its head, which may have worked as a rudder during flight. Dimorphodon was very small and only had a wingspan of between 1.2 and 2.5 metres. Palaeontologists think that it lived and hunted along seashores and rivers.

Answer: True

Deinonychus lived in the middle cretaceous period, about 115-100 million years ago! Powerful, speedy and agile, Deinonychus may have hunted in packs, like todays lions and wolves. A combination of sharp teeth and claws and long, powerful legs for jumping onto prey made deinonychus a powerful hunting machine.

These dinosaurs hunted in packs and so were able to attack prey much larger than themselves.

Answer: Surrey, England

Baryonyx had a large thumb claw on each hand. It may have been used when hunting lizards, fish and amphibians, which formed the majority of its diet. Baryonyx had a slim shape and long, narrow tail, and probably weighed less than 2 tonnes. The long thumb claw of baryonyx measured about 35 centimetres in length.

Answer: 'King Of The Tyrant Reptiles'

The huge skull of tyrannosaurus was deep from top to bottom, but relatively narrow from side to side. The jaw hinged at the rear of the head, giving a vast gape when the mouth was open. Until the 1990s, tyrannosaurus was known as the biggest meat-eating animal ever to walk the Earth, but its size record has been broken by giganotosaurus.

Answer: Allosaurus

Remains of up to 60 allosaurus individuals were found at Dinosaur Quarry, Utah, USA. Allosaurus fossils have also been found in Africa, where millions of years ago, there may have been a land bridge to North America. Allosaurus could not only open its jaws in a huge gape, but it could also flex them so that the whole mouth became wider, for an even bigger bite!