e same applies to stupid: some more, some less -- like us. Certainly, none had people-smarts, and probably none reached the level of our fellow primates. But we know that some were speedy pack hunters, preying on organized herds of much larger animals, like modern wolves -- and wolves are pretty smart.Some misconceptions about dinosaurs have already faded out. Even little kids no longer envision hairy cavemen being chased by allosaurs, or riding tamed brontosaurs. They know that the last dinosaurs were gone long, long before the first humans. But paleontologists are still working out some qualities of dinosaurs. We are discovering, for example, that some -- maybe most -- dinosaurs had societies: they lived in families, herds, or packs. And that means leaders, followers, rules of conduct, and social duties to perform. They weren't just big, stupid individuals looking out only for themselves. Even their most reptile-like quality -- cold-bloodedness -- is being challenged. Some very knowledgeable people are offering some very convincing proof that at least some dinosaurs were warm-blooded.But we can surely rest comfortably in one piece of knowledge about dinosaurs: they are extinct. And that certainly makes us feel superior, doesn't it? Think again. Dinosaurs were the dominant beasts on earth -- on land, in the sea, and in the air -- for 170 million years. We humans, who like to think that we now rule the earth, have only been around for two million years or so. If you subtract our lifetime as a species from theirs, they still dominated the earth about 170 million years longer than we have. And they didn't die out because our superior (mammalian) kind took over. Our ancestors lived all throughout the dinosaur era -- as tiny, mouse like creatures, eating worms and sucking eggs: sort of in the unnoticed niches of the great dinosaur ecology. But they did become extinct, right? Not if by "extinct" you mean, "left no surviving descendants". It ...
