Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are an extinct breed of reptilian animal that dominated the Earth from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous. Fossil records show evidence of their existence dating back more than 230 million years. More than 1,000 species of non-Avian dinosaur are known to have existed within the 160 million years between the Triassic and Creataceous periods. Dinosaurs went extinct around 65 million years ago, the reasons behind which are still hotly debated among paleontologists. The fossil record indicates that birds evolved within theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic period. Some of them survived the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, including the ancestors of all modern birds. Consequently, in modern classification systems, birds are considered a type of dinosaur — the only group of which that has survived to the present day.

The Transformers multimedia franchise featured a team of dinosaur robots called the Dinobots. The Dinobots were a group of Transformers who were a sub-group of the Autobots. They were bipedal quasi-sentient robots who transformed into alternate forms resembling prehistoric Earth dinosaurs. The Autobot inventor, Wheeljack, discovered some dinosaur fossils that they had found in a cave and pitched the idea of building robot dinosaurs to serve as front-line combatants in their ongoing war against the Decepticons. Optimus Prime approved of the idea and Wheeljack created the Dinobots, patterning them after animals of the era. The original three Dinobots were Grimlock - the leader, who took on the form of a Tyrannosaur, Slag - who took on the form of a Triceratops, and Sludge - who assumed the form of a Brontosaurus. Their intellect and speech patterns were based on those of an animal and as such, they were predatory creatures with an instinctive primal need to fight.

Species
Includes some of the more popular breeds of dinosaur featured in science fiction media.

Pliosaur
Pliosaurs were amphibious dinosaurs that existed during the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. They were characterized by their long, slender necks, round bodies and fore and hind flippers. In fiction, Pliosaurs are the central subject of the NBC television series Surface. In the show, it is theorized that a verterbrate sub-genus of the Pilosaur survived into the modern era, making it's habitat in volcanic sea beds in the Northern hemisphere. These mutated pliosaurs actually had clawed feet instead of flippers. Baby pliosaurs, such as the animal named Nimrod, are born from eggs and are about the size of a common house cat upon hatching. At adulthood, these creaturese are immensely huge with a jaw radius capable of swallowing an entire fishing trawler in one bite. Both Nimrod and various adult versions of the mutant Pilosaur were seen in each episode of the show. However, the adults were not fully seen until the end of the series.