Number of dinosaur species

[Graeme Worth <endocrin@opera.iinet.net.au>]

>Hi guys,
>could someone give me the approx. number of dinosaur species known at this
>moment? I'm gussing it's around 700 or so?

Ben,
I don't think its possible to give an exact reply to your question "how many
species of dinosaurs are 
there?". It depends on what you consider a 'valid' species, and that differs
from person to person. For 
what it is worth, I went through my latest revision of my Dinosaur
Encyclopaedia software last night 
and came up with the following:
Valid species   990
Species that are nomina dubia, nomina nuda etc   650
Species names now included with other species (inclusions, referals,
synonyms etc)  707.
So, the grand total is a whopping 2347 species names, but the answer to your
question is more likely 
somewhere between 1000 and 1500.
I imagine if someone else did this exercise they might well come up with
different figures, but I reckon 
these are a pretty good estimate given the subjectivity of some assignments.
Hope this helps
Graeme Worth
(The Dinosaur Encyclopaedia)