Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are an extinct breed of reptilian animal that dominated the Earth from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous. Fossil records show evidence of their existence dating back more than 230 million years. More than 1,000 species of non-Avian dinosaur are known to have existed within the 160 million years between the Triassic and Creataceous periods. Dinosaurs went extinct around 65 million years ago, the reasons behind which are still hotly debated among paleotologists. The fossil record indicates that birds evolved within theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic period. Some of them survived the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, including the ancestors of all modern birds. Consequently, in modern classification systems, birds are considered a type of dinosaur — the only group of which that has survived to the present day.

In terms of science and adventure fiction, dinosaurs have played a major role in various stories going back to the very beginning of the genre itself. One of the most provincial attempts to present dinosaurs in a film setting was in 1925 when Harry O. Hoyt directed the action-thriller The Lost World. It was the first full-length feature film to utilize stop-motion animation in the creation of its creatures.

Dinosaurs enjoyed notable exposure in the foreign markets as well. During the 1950s, Japanese director Ishirō Honda made movie history when he presented the world with the possible after-effects that atomic testing can have on the animal kindom. A mutated dinosaur trounced its way across Tokyo, Japan in a 1954 film called Gojira, though western audiences will come to know the creature better by its more popular moniker - Godzilla.

In the US markets, dinosaurmania rose to new heights when director/producer Steven Spielberg captured the world's imagination with his film adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel Jurassic Park. Spielberg's special effects crew pioneered new processes in computer graphic animation to create the look, texture and feel of his dinosaur super-stars.

Species
Includes some of the more popular breeds of dinosaur featured in science fiction media.