See how bones, teeth, footprints, eggs, skin impressions, and coprolites become evidence. You will practice asking what a fossil can show directly and what must be inferred carefully.

Use skulls, hips, limbs, vertebrae, tails, claws, and teeth to read what an animal could do. This gives you the vocabulary needed to compare dinosaurs without memorizing names blindly.

See how scientists name species and build family trees from shared traits. You will learn why dinosaur classification changes when new fossils or better comparisons appear.

Trace the field from the first named dinosaurs and the Bone Wars to the dinosaur renaissance, feathered fossils, and today’s global research. The goal is to see why old museum images often disagree with modern reconstructions.

Follow the early archosaurs of the Triassic and the traits that let the first dinosaurs stand apart. This chapter covers small early forms, changing ecosystems, and the end-Triassic extinction that opened space for dinosaurs to dominate.

Meet the long-necked plant eaters from early sauropodomorphs to giant sauropods. You will connect their necks, air-filled bones, teeth, feet, and growth patterns to the problem of feeding huge bodies.

Follow meat-eating theropods from early hunters to tyrannosaurs, allosaurs, dromaeosaurs, and birds. This chapter links teeth, claws, skull strength, balance, and feathers to different predatory and scavenging lifestyles.

Study the bird-hipped dinosaurs, including ornithopods, stegosaurs, ankylosaurs, ceratopsians, and pachycephalosaurs. You will see how beaks, batteries of teeth, armor, horns, and display structures evolved in plant-eating lineages.

Place dinosaurs among the plants, insects, mammals, turtles, crocodile relatives, pterosaurs, and marine reptiles around them. This chapter shows how food webs, climate, coastlines, and continents shaped dinosaur life.

Look at the Jurassic spread of sauropods, stegosaurs, early birds, and large theropods. You will connect famous fossil sites to real environments instead of treating them as random collections of skeletons.

Follow the rise of flowering plants, duck-billed dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs, tyrannosaurs, titanosaurs, and diverse feathered forms. This chapter shows why the Cretaceous was not a fading age, but one of dinosaur diversity and change.

Use jaws, teeth, wear marks, stomach stones, bite traces, and coprolites to reconstruct diet. You will compare browsing, grazing-like feeding, predation, scavenging, and specialized feeding strategies.

Read limb bones, joints, footprints, and muscle attachment clues to judge how dinosaurs stood and moved. This chapter covers walking, running, swimming claims, tail balance, and the limits of speed estimates.

Use bone tissue, growth rings, embryos, and size series to study how dinosaurs aged. You will see why many dinosaurs grew fast, why juveniles can confuse classification, and how life history affects extinction risk.

Work with nests, eggs, embryos, trackways, bonebeds, and injury patterns to make careful claims about behavior. This chapter covers herding, nesting colonies, parental care, combat, display, and what evidence is strong or weak.

Study feathers, scales, skin impressions, pigments, and rare soft-tissue traces. You will see how evidence for color, insulation, display, and flight changed the way many dinosaurs are restored.

Follow small feathered theropods through gliding, powered flight, and the survival of modern birds. This chapter treats birds as living dinosaurs and shows which traits evolved before flight and which changed later.

Separate dinosaurs from pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, early mammals, and crocodile relatives. You will be able to place these animals in the same ancient worlds without mixing up their family relationships.

Trace the evidence for the Chicxulub impact, volcanic stress, climate disruption, food-web collapse, and selective survival. This chapter explains why non-bird dinosaurs died out while birds, mammals, crocodilians, turtles, and other groups continued.

Follow real dinosaur work from finding a site to publication and museum care. You will see prospecting, permits, excavation, jackets, preparation, cataloging, description, peer review, and public display as one connected workflow.

Use quarry maps, field notes, photos, measurements, and specimen labels to keep fossil evidence trustworthy. This chapter shows why context can be as important as the bone itself.

See how CT scans, synchrotron imaging, and micro-CT reveal hidden bones, skull cavities, teeth, embryos, and internal structures without destroying specimens. You will learn what these tools can show and where interpretation still needs caution.

Work with photogrammetry, laser scanning, digital restoration, 3D printing, and shared online models. This chapter shows how researchers repair crushed fossils, compare specimens, and make evidence available beyond one museum drawer.

Use computer models to test bite forces, limb stresses, body mass, balance, and possible motion. You will see how digital dinosaurs are judged by assumptions, living-animal comparisons, and sensitivity tests.

Read bone histology, stable isotopes, tooth chemistry, and rare molecular traces to study growth, temperature, migration, diet, and preservation. This chapter also explains why dinosaur DNA is not available for cloning.

Use specimen databases, occurrence maps, stratigraphic ranges, and phylogenetic software to study diversity and evolution. You will see how big datasets help answer questions about dinosaur spread, extinction, and family relationships.

Connect fossils to ancient continents, sea levels, deserts, forests, polar regions, and volcanic provinces. This chapter shows how plate tectonics and climate models help explain where dinosaurs lived and why discoveries differ by region.

Practice judging museum mounts, documentaries, toys, news stories, and paleoart against the evidence. You will learn how to spot outdated poses, overconfident claims, and good reconstructions that clearly separate fact from guesswork.

Cover fossil collecting laws, Indigenous and local community concerns, commercial fossil sales, repatriation debates, and museum responsibilities. This chapter shows why scientific value depends on legal, ethical, and well-documented care.

Plan next steps through museum volunteering, field schools, amateur fossil clubs, paleoart, science writing, data projects, and university paths in paleontology. You will know what proof-of-skill artifacts matter and how dinosaur researchers stay current.