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Article

Counting dinosaurs: how many kinds were there?

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America - 1 Oct 1990

Dodson P

Abstract excerpt

Dinosaurs figure prominently in discussions of mass extinctions and evolutionary metrics, but their usefulness is hampered by archaic taxonomy, imprecise biostratigraphy, and imperfect preservation that bias our understanding of dinosaur diversity. A critical evaluation shows that of 540 genera and 800 species of dinosaurs proposed since 1824, 285 genera and 336 species are probably valid. Nearly half of all...

Topics

Animals
Biological Evolution
Fossils
Genetic Variation
Models, Genetic
Reptiles
Time

Source

Methodology Data sources Editorial policy Privacy About Contact Helena Bioinformatics

Identifiers

PMID: 2217192
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.87.19.7608
PMCID: PMC54797

Provenance

PubMed metadata and Literature Corpus relationships. Corpus snapshot updated 29 Aug 2026. Prepared record publication-2217192-2026-08-29.1. Manifest publication-graph-cohort-2026-08-29.1.

Source receipt: PubMed via Helena Literature Corpus, retrieved 29 Aug 2026.

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