How do scientists know dinosaurs and other ancient creatures existed?
Digging Up Giants
How do scientists know dinosaurs and other ancient creatures existed?
Picture a creature taller than a house, with teeth like steak knives, stomping across a swamp millions of years before anyone could write it down. No human ever saw it. No photo was ever taken. And yet scientists can tell you what it ate, how it walked, and roughly when it lived. How? Because the past, it turns out, is terrible at hiding.
When an animal dies, it usually vanishes — eaten, rotted, scattered. But every so often, one gets buried fast, under mud or sand or ash, before anything can carry it off. Buried bones are protected bones. And protection is the first ingredient of a very long magic trick.
