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- Deccan Traps
- These are rock formations covering hundreds of thousands of square miles that form much of the highlands of modern India. They are the result of what may have been the most massive volcanic eruption on Earth. They occurred at almost the exact time as the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. Some scientists theorize that the smoke and ash sent into the atmosphere may have combined with that from the comet or asteroid that hit near North America, contributing to the loss of sunlight on the surface of the Earth that may have led to the end of the dinosaurs. In fact, it is possible that a second meteor or comet struck the Earth near India and caused the volcanic eruptions that created the Deccan Traps.
- Dentary
- The largest bone of the lower jaw is called the dentary
- Dermal Plates
- See scutes
- Diapsid
- Reptiles with two openings behind the orbit (eye socket) are called diapsids.
- Dinosaur Names
- Dinosaur names can be very confusing. Most are derived from older Greek words. Some are named using the names of people or places and even companies. For example, Qantassaurus is named after an airline because that company sponsored dinosaur research and exhibitions. Gastonia is named after Rob Gaston because he helped discover that dinosaur. The proper way to show dinosaur names is to have the genus and species in italics and to capitalize the genus, but not the species; for example, Tyrannosaurus rex, where Tyrannosaurus is the genus and rex is the species. For more information, see "classification".
- Disarticulated
- Most fossils are found disarticulated. This means that the bones are no longer in their original positions as they would have been in life.
- Doedicurus
- This peculiar creature looks a little like a giant armadillo. In fact, they were members of the edentate group of animals, which includes modern armadillos. Doedicurus was a Glyptodont, an extinct family of very large edentates with huge domed shell on their backs. Some grew to almost 10 feet (3 m) long and weighed as much as a modern hippopotamus - more than 2 tons. The similarity of Glyptodonts to another extinct prehistoric family, the Ankylosaur dinosaurs, is striking and is yet another example of nature recycling a good design. Doedicurus even had a spiked club on its tail, just like the extinct dinosaurs. Some of the shells that these animals carried were so large that prehistoric man used them as houses.
- Dorsal
- The word dorsal refers to the back of an animal. Dorsal vertebrae are those below the neck (cervical) vertebrae.
- Dromaeosaur
- Dromaeosaurs were a family of meat-eaters that included the raptors such as Velociraptor. They were small to medium sized, quick, and possibly feathered.
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