Human–dinosaur coexistence

with a Harris's hawk (an avian dinosaur) Birds evolved from a group of theropod dinosaurs (Paraves) during the Jurassic period. Modern birds are cladistically and phylogenetically dinosaurs, and humanity has thus coexisted with avian dinosaurs since the first humans appeared on Earth. However, in a narrow and more colloquial sense, the term "dinosaur" often refers specifically to non-avian dinosaurs, all of which died out in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction about 66 million years ago, while the genus Homo emerged only about 3 million years ago, leaving a period of tens of millions of years between the last dinosaurs and the first humans. The most massive birds known to have coexisted with humans are the moa of New Zealand The largest moa, the South Island giant moa (Dinornis robustus), could reach heights of over 3.5 meters (11.5 feet). It is unclear if humans ever coexisted with the terror birds of South America since most (perhaps all) species appear to already have been extinct before humans arrived. and the smallest is the bee hummingbird, which is also the smallest known dinosaur. ==Fiction and mythology==

Speculative fiction commonly portrays non-avian dinosaurs with humans. Examples include The Flintstones, in which Stone Age humans have dinosaurs as pets and transportation, and the comic series The Cavern Clan, in which the protagonist is a caveman who hunts dinosaurs, as well as in the comic strip Alley Oop. The coexistence has been present in works of alternative history in which dinosaurs do not go extinct, such as the 2015 Pixar film The Good Dinosaur and the fantasy book series Dinotopia. Many Young Earth creationists believe that non-avian dinosaurs coexisted with humans. Since Young Earth creationists believe the Earth to only be a few thousand years old, their worldview is incompatible with the scientific understanding of geological history and the fossil record. Dinosaur fossils are by different groups of Young Earth creationists either interpreted as hoaxes, sometimes said to be orchestrated by Satan, or as the remains of creatures that cannot have lived as long ago as science has determined. The second explanation implies that dinosaurs would have coexisted with humans. Creationists also tend to reject the fossil evidence that many non-avian dinosaurs were feathered, since this is among the evidence that birds descended from them through evolution. Some proponents have claimed that mythological reptiles such as dragons and the Behemoth are historical descriptions of dinosaurs. Although many modern depictions of dragons share certain similarities with dinosaurs, this is a recent artistic development spurred by the discovery of dinosaur fossils in the nineteenth century onwards. Earlier depictions of dragons tended to have far fewer such similarities, for instance being less bulky and more serpentine. == Historical artwork and artifacts ==

Misinterpretations ", erroneously identified by some as a depiction of a stegosaur In some cases, historical artwork has been interpreted as depicting non-avian dinosaurs. Although there is artwork that in cases share superficial resemblances with some dinosaur species, identifying them as such often involves ignoring both the context of the artwork itself and dinosaur biology. Some examples of historical art, particularly from Ancient Rome and Egypt, that has been interpreted as dinosaurian by pseudoscientists are conventionally seen as depictions of crocodiles. During the Great Depression, some footprints carved to resemble human feet were sold to tourists in the vicinity of the Paluxy River tracksite; these were recognized as fakes by the paleontologist Roland T. Bird, though helped him to discover the original tracksite in 1940. == Cryptozoology ==

is a mythical water-dwelling entity that is believed to exist in the Congo River Basin. Many cryptids have been suggested by cryptozoologists to be living representatives or descendants of various extinct animals, including non-avian dinosaurs. The suggested scenarios for how such organisms are supposed to have survived are often highly flawed, contradicting the abundant data on known geological events and the fossil record. The supposed identifications are also often only based on reconstructions of extinct organisms, consequently limiting them to species often appearing in popular literature as well as views on them now considered to be outdated. As a general example, cryptozoological identifications of various supposed lake monsters often default to identifying them as living plesiosaurs, despite numerous other groups both extinct and extant being more similar in appearance and biology. Similarly, some cryptozoologists have also suggested that several Native American legends concerning horned water monsters are identifiable with crested hadrosaurs, with the horns equated with their crests. This identification derives from the outdated idea that hadrosaurs were amphibious, common in the twentieth century but now discredited. ==See also==