ScienceThe ProfessorBeginner
The World of Dinosaurs, a free science course on Tomo

The World of Dinosaurs

Like Duolingo, but for The World of Dinosaurs. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.

91 levels across 8 sections, about 182 minutes end to end, roughly 36 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Spotting a Real Dinosaur; Daily Life and Survival Mechanics; The Dinosaur Family Tree; The Triassic Dawn: Hot Deserts and First Steps; The Lush Jurassic: Giants in the Golden Age; The Dynamic Cretaceous: Flowers, Inland Seas, and Diversity Peak; Mesozoic Co-Stars; and Extinction and Living Legacy. It starts from scratch.

91 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Dino Dan, the guide who teaches the The World of Dinosaurs course
The World of Dinosaurs
with Dino Dan
91
Levels
8
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in The World of Dinosaurs

  • Dinosaurs lived strictly on land
  • Flying reptiles like pterosaurs and marine reptiles like plesiosaurs belong to separate reptile branches
  • Dinosaur legs stood straight down under the body like pillars
  • Lizards and crocodiles have sprawling limbs that stick out sideways before bending down
  • Dinosaurs had a hole straight through their hip socket that positioned their legs vertically
  • Erect posture avoided compressing the lungs, letting dinosaurs run and breathe at the same time unlike sprawling reptiles
  • Non-avian dinosaurs lived strictly during the Mesozoic Era and died out about 66 million years ago
  • Early humans appeared tens of millions of years after non-avian dinosaurs vanished
  • Dimetrodon lived in the Permian period and died out roughly 40 million years before dinosaurs evolved
  • Dimetrodon is actually more closely related to ancient mammal ancestors than to dinosaurs
  • All dinosaurs split into two primary lineages based on hip architecture
  • The two groups are named lizard-hipped and bird-hipped based on pelvis arrangement
  • In lizard-hipped dinosaurs, the pubis bone angles forward to anchor running leg muscles
  • In bird-hipped dinosaurs, the pubis points backward toward the tail
  • Swinging the hip bone backward opened up a wide cavity under the belly
  • A huge abdominal space was necessary to hold massive gut systems that fermented tough vegetation
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives The World of Dinosaurs the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

What Makes a Real Dinosaur

Where do winged pterosaurs and ocean-swimming plesiosaurs fit on the reptile family tree?

Get it right to open this lesson and 90 more in the app.

Course map

Where The World of Dinosaurs takes you

Step into the Mesozoic Era to discover how dinosaurs evolved, survived, and ruled the ancient Earth. From daily feeding and social life to the lost climates of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous, explore the real creatures behind the fossils.

  1. 1

    Spotting a Real Dinosaur

    • What Counts as a Dinosaur
    • The Two Great Hip Designs
  2. 2

    Daily Life and Survival Mechanics

    • Feeding Mechanics: Teeth, Beaks, and Gizzard Stones
    • Locomotion: Trackways, Stride, and Tail Balance
    • Social Display: Crests, Frills, and Visual Signals
    • Reproduction: Eggs, Clutches, and Parental Care
  3. 3

    The Dinosaur Family Tree

    • Theropods: From Agile Hunters to Feathered Giants
    • Sauropodomorphs: How Long Necks Conquered the Canopy
    • Armored Dinosaurs: Stegosaurs and Ankylosaurs
    • Horned Faces and Duckbills: Ceratopsians and Hadrosaurs
  4. 4

    The Triassic Dawn: Hot Deserts and First Steps

    • Pangaea's Deserts and the Permian Aftermath
    • How Early Dinosaurs Outlasted Their Rivals
    • The End-Triassic Turnover: Volcanism and Giant Survivors
  5. 5

    The Lush Jurassic: Giants in the Golden Age

    • Continental Breakup and Greenhouse Climates
    • Ancient Floras: Conifers, Cycads, and Fern Meadows
    • The Age of Immensity: Ecosystems of the Late Jurassic
  6. 6

    The Dynamic Cretaceous: Flowers, Inland Seas, and Diversity Peak

    • Seaways and Micro-Continents: Cretaceous Geography
    • The Rise of Flowers: Angiosperms and Changing Herbivores
    • Polar Survivals and Cretaceous Weather Extremes
  7. 7

    Mesozoic Co-Stars

    • Shadows in the Sky and Waves: Pterosaurs and Marine Reptiles
    • Beneath the Giants: Early Mammals, Amphibians, and Insects
  8. 8

    Extinction and Living Legacy

    • The K-Pg Catastrophe: Impact, Darkness, and Collapse
    • The Avian Bridge: How Dinosaurs Walk Among Us Today

8 sections · 23 units · 91 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Professor

The World of Dinosaurs is taught in the The Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

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Start The World of Dinosaurs today.

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