Question: How do you know what the dinisours looked like and what colouers they were. How did you aslso know were to put the bones.

Hussain Jaffery answered on 14 Nov 2015:

A nice and difficult question!

Most of what we know about dinosaurs comes from the fossilised remains of their bones. Fossils are ‘hardened or mineralised’ remains of mostly bones, and some soft tissue like feathers/skin and are found in layers of soil that were laid down millions of years ago, back when the dinosaurs lived and died.

Palaeontologists and look for and study these fossils in order to understand how the dinosaur that they came from lived and looked like.

What’s really surprising is that to a large extent, humans and other boney animals share similar a pattern in the way bones are organised. Dinosaurs also are included in this category. For example, we know that the skull goes in front of the neck vertebrae and the the ribs and arms follow, etc. Palaeontologists find a bunch of fossils and set out to solve the puzzle of how they fit!

They then measure sizes of bones and shapes to make an outline of the animal. Just by looking at the shape of teeth, and size legs, they tell what it ate and how it walked and how fast it could have been. This is because dinosaurs needed their bones for all of the things they did – just like we do – as bones are involved in all activity of a boney animal.

Aside form fossil bones, scientists have also recently found fossilised skin, and fossilised feathers. Now we know that many dinos had feathers. Chemical analysis on these feather fossils have revealed some really bright colours. Turns out T-Rex’s were rather flamboyant!

So in summary, fossilised bones tell us a lot about shape, looks and lifestyle of dinosaurs. We are able to put the bones together because of what we already know about how whole skeletons look like. 🙂