Cretaceous
The Cretaceous period is one of the major divisions of the geologic timescale, reaching from the end of the Jurassic period, about 146 million years ago (Ma), to the beginning of the Paleocene epoch of the Tertiary period (65.5 Ma).
The end of the Cretaceous also defines the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras..
Feathered dinosaurs
The realization that dinosaurs are closely related to birds raised the obvious possibility that some dinosaurs had feathers.
Fossils of Archaeopteryx include well-preserved feathers, but it was not until the early 1990’s that clearly nonavian dinosaur fossils were discovered with preserved feathers.
Today there are more than a dozen genera of dinosaurs with fossil feathers, all of which are theropods.
Most are from the Yixian formation in China.
The fossil feathers of one specimen, Shuvuuia deserti, have even tested positive for beta keratin, the main protein in bird feathers, in immunological tests. Particularly well-preserved (and legitimate) fossils of feathered dinosaurs were discovered during the 1990s and 2000s.
The fossils were preserved in a Lagerstätte — a sedimentary deposit exhibiting remarkable richness and completeness in its fossils — in Liaoning, China.
The area had repeatedly been smothered in volcanic ash produced by eruptions in Inner Mongolia 124 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous Period.
The fine-grained ash preserved the living organisms that it buried in fine detail.
The area was teeming with life, with millions of leaves and the oldest known angiosperms, insects, fish, frogs, salamanders, mammals, turtles, lizards and crocodilians discovered to date. The most important discoveries at Liaoning have been a host of feathered dinosaur fossils, with a steady stream of new finds filling in the picture of the dinosaur-bird connection and adding more to theories of the evolutionary development of feathers and flight..
Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur.
The species Tyrannosaurus rex, commonly abbreviated to T.rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time.
It hails from what is now western North America.
Some scientists consider the slightly older Tarbosaurus bataar from Asia to represent a second species of Tyrannosaurus, while others maintain Tarbosaurus as a separate genus. Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail.
Relative to the large and powerful hindlimbs, Tyrannosaurus forelimbs were small and retained only two digits.
Although other theropods rivaled or exceeded T.rex in size, it was the largest known tyrannosaurid and one of the largest known land predators, measuring over 12 metres (40 feet) in length and weighing as much as an elephant. Fossils of some T.rex have been found in North American rock formations dating to the very end of the Cretaceous Period (late Maastrichtian stage, 65 million years ago); it was among the last dinosaurs to exist prior to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.
More than 30 specimens of T.rex have now been identified, some nearly complete, which has allowed significant research into many aspects of its biology, including its life history and biomechanics.
The feeding habits and potential speed of T.rex remain controversial..
Albertosaurus
Albertosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, more than 70 million years ago..

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