based on the number of dinosaurs all ready found how many species to scientist estimate are still to be found?

Answer 1

To fill in evolutionary gaps, we believe that there are as many as 500,000. However, that doesn't include species and subspecies, only to the genera. In short, we estimate the number is equivalent to the number of living species today. Virtually every day, a new species is recognized. Many are known only by fragments and it takes a lot of work to establish their taxa. Here in China, we have found numerous eggs but we have found a fool-proof method to identify the parents. In both the Gobi Desert and near Mao Ming, (in Guang Dong Province) I have found fossils that seem substantially different from known species...are they new??? Perhaps but many other people determine that...I just find them. Message me if you want to see photos.

Answer 2

No one's ever really estimated the total number of dinosaur species that ever existed.

There is somewhere around 4500 mammal species living today. Dinosaurs in some ways show similar diversity in habitats and adaptations as the large mammals. Many of the mammals are small rodents or bats though, and small dinosaurs are rarer and don't show the same species diversity.

So it's possible there were as many as 2000 different species of dinosaur alive on the planet at any one time.

However that's at any one time.

The dinosaurs existed for over 150 million years, throughout the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

If each species survived for about 5 million years, that comes out to about 60,000 different species of dinosaurs that ever existed.

There are too many assumptions in that calculation to be of any significant scientific validity, but it gives a broad overview of the wide diversity of dinosaur fauna that once existed.

The fact that we've only described a few hundred species of dinosaur owes to the very rare process of preservation and discovery that filters the window through which paleontologists can view the past.