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Katha
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Bhagavad Gita

Millions of years ago, giant reptiles ruled the earth. These were called dinosaurs. The word 'dinosaur' comes from the Greek words meaning 'terrible lizard'. These reptiles lived during the Mesozoic era, which started about 225 million years ago, and lasted for about 160 million years. They became extinct some 65 million years ago -  perhaps the changing conditions on the earth made life impossible for them. The exact reasons are, however, unknown and the experts have different opinions about it.

Dinosaurs were short - legged animals. They used to walk on their hind legs. Most of them had gigantic bodies. They were able t o live both on land and in water. Many dinosaurs had smooth skin while others had scaly skins and still other s were armored with large bony plates. Some dinosaurs were carnivorous (meat-eaters) while others were herbivorous (plant-eaters). All these dinosaurs originated from reptiles and consequently had retained their
characteristics.

In the beginning, their size was small and they could walk on their hind legs only, but as the conditions changed they started becoming larger. And, so, they needed four legs to walk. In course of time it became difficult for them to walk and hence they started spending most of their time in the rivers and the mud.

Dinosaurs are divided into two distinct classes:
• The saurischia and
• The ornithischia.

The lizard-hipped saurischians are further divided into two groups:
• The sauropods or herbivorous and
• The theropods or carnivorous.

The sauropods were the largest of the dinosaurs. They included the massive Brontosaurus (Thunder Lizard) whose length was upto 24 m and weight upto 45 metric tons. They had long necks and tails and walked on all four legs. Even larger than the Brontosaurus was the Brachiosaurus - the largest of all the dinosaurs. The Brachiosaurus weighed upto 85 metric tons.. The carnivorous theropods walked on their hind legs. They used their ftont legs for grabbing and tearing the food. They hunted down the herbivorous sauropods. The tyrannosaurus was the largest carnivorous animal. It was about 6 m long with teeth extending upto 15 cm.

The bird-hipped ornithischians included both the armor-plated dinosaurs and the duckbilled dinosaurs. They had long necks. They used to have two brains and were capable of swimming in water.