The Last Sauropods
The last sauropods were titanosaurs—the final surviving long-necked dinosaurs, still ranging from giants to smaller and even armored forms at the end of the Cretaceous.
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Dinosauria
The Last Ornithischians
Even near the end, ornithischians remained a diverse and successful branch of plant-eating dinosaurs.
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The Last Pterosaurs
The last pterosaurs were not all the same, and they were not simply faded leftovers.
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Tyrannosaurus Rex
T. rex lived in western North America about 69 to 66 million years ago. All dinosaurs, except potentially three lines of birds, went extinct 66 million years ago, when the Chicxulub asteroid hit.
Proceratosaurus (T.Rex ancestor)
Proceratosaurus had the same general tyrannosaur-style look: a big head, long tail, strong hind legs, short forelimbs, and a built-for-biting predator shape: D-shaped front teeth and a crest on top of the skull.
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Dinosauria Emerge: True Dinosaurs!
Before the famous branches split into predators, long-necks, horned giants, and birds, there was one early ancestral species. One population eventually led to all dinosaurs: Allosaurus, Styracosaurus, and Diplodocus.
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Triceratops
Triceratops, one of the last great horned dinosaurs, roamed western North America at the very end of the Age of Dinosaurs with its three horns, broad frill, and heavy four-legged build.
Zuniceratops
Zuniceratops shows an earlier stage in the evolution of the horns and frill later made famous by Triceratops.
Bashanosaurus primitivus
Bashanosaurus primitivus is one of the earliest known stegosaurs and a strong candidate for representing an early form close to the ancestry of later plated dinosaurs like Stegosaurus.
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Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus is the classic plated dinosaur most people picture: large back plates, a small head, and a spiked tail used for defense. It lived late in the Jurassic.
Neoaves Birds Emerge (from Neognathae)
Neoaves is the enormous living bird branch that includes all birds that are not part of the ostrich-tinamou branch and not part of the duck-chicken branch.
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Galloanserae Birds Emerge (from Neognathae)
Galloanserae is the living bird branch that includes landfowl and waterfowl: chickens, turkeys, pheasants, ducks, geese, and swans.
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Palaeognathae Birds Emerge
Palaeognathae is the living bird branch that includes ostriches, emus, cassowaries, rheas, kiwis, and tinamous.
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Neornithes (Crown Birds) emerge
Three branches of modern birds evolved from within neornithes: Struthio camelus (the ostrich), Gallus gallus (chickens), and Passer domesticus (the house sparrow is a good one).
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Hesperornithiformes Birds Emerge (Now Extinct)
Hesperornithiformes were early, highly specialized diving birds that evolved before modern birds.
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Enantiornithes Birds Emerge (Now Extinct)
Enantiornithes were one of the most successful early bird branches of the Cretaceous, but unlike Confuciusornithiformes, they generally kept their teeth and often looked a bit more like small, sharp-faced bird-dinosaurs than beaked proto-birds.
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Confuciusornithiformes Birds Emerge (Now Extinct)
Weird carryovers and side experiments: clawed wings, elaborate ribbon-like tail feathers, and a mix of advanced beak features with a still primitive dinosaurian body.
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First True Bird: Archaeopteryx
Archaeopteryx, from about 150 million years ago, is an early bird that still looked strikingly dinosaurian, with feathers and wings alongside teeth, clawed hands, and a long tail.
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Sauropodomorph Line Diverges Within Dinosaria (from Saurischia)
Sauropodomorphs, in their early forms, were lightly built, often partly bipedal, with long necks, small heads, leaf-shaped teeth, and grasping hands.
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Theropod Line Diverges Within Dinosaria (from Saurischia)
Theropods were the agile, sharp-toothed dinosaur branch that refined the classic predator body plan. They stood fully upright on two legs and balanced with long tails.
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