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Fossils are the remains and traces of dead animals and plants that have been buried and preserved within rocks, sometimes for hundreds of millions of years. Conditions had to be just right for a dead animal or plant to be fossilized. It had to be buried quickly, far away from things that would normally make it decay, or creatures that would eat it. This helped to keep the body in good condition. Once buried, the animal’s bones and other hard body parts were gradually replaced by minerals, creating fossils. Sometimes, if we are really lucky, even soft parts of animals can be preserved
Palaeontologists spend a lot of time working out what a whole dinosaur might have looked like, from just a few bones! Luckily, we do sometimes find complete skeletons. These can be used as guides to help palaeontologists work out what other dinosaurs may have looked like, and help establish how different bones would have fitted together. Fossilized bones can tell us a lot about dinosaurs. We can discover how they moved, how old they were when they died, and how fast they grew. Some bones even show signs of injuries, giving us clues about how the dinosaur died
From studying bones, we know that Pisanosaurus mertii (Ornithischian, Triassic Period) was probably the first dinosaur to have a “bird-hipped” arrangement of hip bones instead of a “lizard-hipped” arrangement. It had a sleek body almost like a modern greyhound, which, combined with its long tail for balance, meant it could run fast to avoid predators