Welcome to the Dinoera.com website, the Encyclopedia of Ancient Life.
The site contains descriptions of extinct animals and plants, arranged in a systematic order. Modern animals are also mentioned to maintain the order of classification, but the main focus is on extinct organisms. Characteristics of past geological epochs, their climates, and the movement of ancient continents are provided as well.
Dinoera.com is the most comprehensive encyclopedia of dinosaurs. Most existing information resources and literature on paleontology are exclusively dedicated to famous creatures like dinosaurs. Still, they are just one, albeit very spectacular, example in the history of organic world development. This leaves many other groups of beings, fascinating in their own right, out of focus and prevents us from seeing the world of animals and plants in all its diversity and close evolutionary interconnections. Famous trilobites remain beyond the scope of such consideration, as well as the equally well-known flying reptiles – pterosaurs, and marine reptiles – ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, no less famous than dinosaurs. The Dinoera.com website presents an attempt to showcase all organisms that existed on Earth, within their interrelationships and evolutionary sequences.
The history of Earth from its formation as a planet up to the present day is primarily studied by two sciences: paleontology and historical geology. Paleontology (from the Greek words “Palaios” (ancient), “Ontos” (being), and “Logos” (concept, study) investigates the organic world of past epochs and the laws of life’s development and evolution. The subject of paleontology includes fossil remains and imprints of extinct organisms, as well as traces of their activities. The aim of paleontology as a biological science is to reconstruct the organic world of the past with its developmental laws over time and space.
Historical geology reconstructs the physical conditions of the Earth’s surface during past epochs and restores the history of tectonic movements of the Earth’s crust. It arranges the times of appearance, peak development, and extinction of many animal groups, the remains of which have been preserved in fossil form.