The Deinonychus is a really interesting dinosaur that has answered a lot of questions about dinosaurs and has created a whole lot more questions. One of the biggest questions the Deinonychus created was whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded.
Before scientists started to study the Deinonychus, they mostly believed that dinosaurs were slow, cold-blooded animals. But after studying the body of the Deinonychus, which was built for quick movements, some started to question whether they had been wrong about dinosaurs all along! There is a lot that we still don’t know about the Deinonychus, but we do know that they were hunters with long, curved teeth and very dangerous back claws.
The Deinonychus did not grow much taller than three feet, but they could stretch as long as eleven feet from tail to head! A lot of scientists agree that Deinonychus dinosaurs hunted in packs, but others think that they hunted alone and mostly scavenged for food that was already dead.
The Deinonychus body looks like it was built for fast running, but because of the way the legs are built scientists don’t really know for sure if they were fast dinosaurs or not. It is likely that they were not very fast at all, but that they used group hunting to catch their prey.
Deinonychus fossils have been found in Montana, Wyoming, and Oklahoma, and their teeth have been found as far away as Maryland.
Online lessons for kids: dinolingo.com
