╦For 150 million years, dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Today palaeontologists continue to search for the fossils of these great creatures that disappeared mysteriously 65 million years ago. In spite of their popular image, not all dinosaurs were towering, ferocious monsters - some of them were no bigger than a cat. Like all reptiles, dinosaurs - from the Greek word meaning "terrible lizards" - began life inside an egg, which both nourished and protected them. @Hatching@
Here a ºProtoceratopsº emerges from its egg. This reconstruction was made possible by the discovery of many fossilized eggs alongside dinosaur bones of this type in the Gobi desert in central Asia. The eggs were approximately 15 cm (6 inches) in length.
