Dinosaur Party Food Labels for Your Little Monsters

Everything Dinosaur was asked the other day by a customer how to encourage children to try different party food.  This is no mean task as young children tend to eat in what we call the “tsunami” style and we are not referring to the mess that a dozen or so excited, enthusiastic dinosaur fans can cause at a dinosaur themed party.  If one child tries something then others will follow, by the same token if one child rejects some item of dinosaur party food then those around him or her are likely to do the same.

To avoid such problems and in order to help offer a range of healthy dinosaur party food, Everything Dinosaur has created a couple of simple dinosaur themed party food labels.   Staff get emailed: Contact Us and our dedicated team members email out two dinosaur themed labels for party food.  Each label features a different dinosaur, a meat-eater (Concavenator) for those food items which are meat-based and a second label with a herbivorous, horned dinosaur (Kosmoceratops).  This second label can be used for non-meat based food items.  The box under the dinosaur image is for grown ups preparing the food to write a description.  Mums and dads can get quite creative with labels such as “Sauropod salad”, “Cretaceous cheese sandwiches” and “Jurassic jam”.

One of the Everything Dinosaur Party Food Labels (Dinosaur Themed Party)

Kosmoceratops encourages young children to eat their greens.

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

The labels have proved very popular and it is amazing how quickly young children will tuck into a salad if it is labelled with a dinosaur.  The pictures can be coloured in and they make a useful addition to the check list of dinosaur themed items required to help make a dinosaur party a roaring success.

Fossil Polishing Demonstration at Museum

Members of the public have the opportunity to take part in fossil polishing and learn the skills of fossil preparation next weekend (18th and 19th May), as experts will be demonstrating their skills and knowledge at the Lyme Regis Museum (Dorset, southern England).

If you have ever wondered how Ammonite fossils are prepared so that all the exquisite details of their internal structures are revealed, then pop down to the Lyme Regis Museum next weekend and meet up with renowned fossil experts Brandon Lennon and Chris Andrew who will be demonstrating how Ammonite fossils should be polished.  The fossil polishing team, recently attended the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival and over the course of the three day event they managed to prepare and polish in excess of 700 Ammonite specimens.  For a small fee, members of the public can have a go at preparing their very own Jurassic specimen and if they are lucky they will be able to purchase part of the amazing legacy of the famous Jurassic coast.

Brandon and Chris Being Kept Very Busy at the Recent Fossil Festival

Brandon Lennon (background) and Chris Andrew (foreground) working with Ammonites.

Picture Credit: Brandon Lennon

Lyme Regis fossil expert Brandon commented:

“Sometimes members of the public are surprised that there are still fossils to be found, after all, fossils have been collected from this part of the Dorset coast for more than two hundred years.  The reason that we keep discovering fossils along this part of the Jurassic coast is because the cliffs are constantly eroding.  Storms and high tides keep revealing fossils”.

Ammonites and their relatives the Goniatites are an extinct group of cephalopods (Molluscs) related to today’s squid and cuttlefish.  Ammonite shells were made of aragonite (a form of calcium carbonate).  They were abundant in the shallow seas of the Mesozoic and diversified into a huge range of different species.  Ammonites are an important group of fossils and help scientists to age rock strata due to their biostratigraphic distribution.

The fossil preparation demonstrations start at 10am and run through to 4pm on Saturday and Sunday (18th and 19th May) and all are welcome to take part in real “hands-on” science.

A spokesperson from Everything Dinosaur stated:

“This is a rare opportunity to pick the brains of local fossil experts in the Lyme Regis area and to learn some of the skills of fossil preparation and fossil identification.”

After a number of recent rock falls, there should be plenty of specimens available, although members of the public are advised to heed the advice of the local authorities when walking close to the cliffs or indeed taking any of the coastal paths.  Many of the cliffs remain unstable and the threat of landslides and rock falls requires visitors to this part of the south coast to take care.

To get the best out of a visit to the Lyme Regis or Charmouth areas Everything Dinosaur recommends taking a guided tour of the beaches with a local fossil expert.

For more information about guided fossil walks: Guided Fossil Walks

Wishing Sir David Many Happy Returns – Leicestershire Gives Up Fossil Secrets

Very best wishes to Sir David Attenborough, the broadcaster and naturalist, who celebrates his birthday today.  Sir David is as busy as ever, this week, a new BBC Radio 4 series entitled “Tweet of the Day” has started.  The programme is dedicated to birdsong and is due to be aired before the start of the “Today” programme at 05.58 am (BST) each morning.  Sir David will narrate for the first month, but the series will run for a whole year and feature 265 birds and their songs that can be heard around the British Isles.  The team behind the daily broadcast hope that the British public will learn more about birds through their songs and calls.  Each programme will begin with the bird song or call, followed by a brief story or fascinating fact about the particular bird featured.

With so many early starts recently, team members at Everything Dinosaur have been treated to a number of dawn choruses of late.  It is fascinating to hear these “avian dinosaurs” in the early morning.

Happy Birthday Sir David Attenborough

Life Stories, just one of Sir David Attenborough’s many media projects.

Picture Credit: BBC

Sir David, in comments he made when being interviewed about his involvement in this new natural history series, stated that British people are very concerned when it comes to wildlife.  It can be rather taken for granted when it surrounds you all the time, you can become a little blasé about it all.

However, Sir David said:

“I think British people care more about the natural world because the Industrial Revolution started here.  We’ve been losing countryside for longer than anyone else.”

We look forward to seeing on television a new series on fossils and fossil collecting which will be fronted by Sir David Attenborough, this should be aired in the autumn.

In the meantime,  scientists from the BGS (British Geological Survey) in Nottinghamshire have been shedding some light on fossils that could have been found by a young Sir David Attenborough.  As a boy, Sir David loved collecting fossils as he grew up in Leicestershire.  There are a number of limestone outcrops which represent strata laid down in the Early Jurassic.  These Lower Jurassic sediments contain a variety of fossils and the young naturalist would often cycle to a quarry and search the scree for ammonites, bivalves and belemnites.

He used to take some of his finds to the New Walk Museum in Leicester, where a very kind and helpful geologist called H. H. Gregory would help him to identify them and catalogue them.  He even helped out at the museum during the school holidays.  It was learning about fossils that helped fuel his passion for the natural world.  The rocks exposed around the Charnwood Forest area of Leicester, although only a few miles from where the young Sir David was living, held no attraction for him.  These rocks although layered and stratified were regarded as Precambrian in age and by definition they were devoid of fossils.

All that changed in April 1957 when schoolboy Roger Mason, from the same Leicester grammar school that Sir David had attended less than twenty years earlier, found a fossil in the Charnwood rocks.  When climbing on some rocks with his friends a strange impression of a frond-like structure was spotted on the surface of a boulder.  This turned out to be evidence of an ancient marine organism that lived on the bottom of a deep ocean something like 570 million years ago.  The organism, superficially like a extant sea pen was named Charnia masoni.  A number of these fossils have been found subsequently in the Late Precambrian rocks in the Charnwood Forest area.  Several specimens including the original holotype material are on display at the New Walk Museum, but many more have been discovered thanks to the British Geological Survey team.

The research team painted silicone rubber onto the exposed rock surfaces in the Charnwood Forest area.  Once set, peeled off and brought back to the laboratory, casts could be made which revealed a substantial number of new Charnia specimens.

Casts Reveal Many New Charnia Fossils

Discovering more ancient Precambrian fossils.

Picture Credit: British Geological Survey

The cast above, shows the delicate, frond-like structure with bilateral symmetry.

Research team leader, Dr. Phil Wilby commented:

“By using the silicon moulds we have discovered there are literally thousands of fossils and they are gobsmackingly beautiful.”

Fossils of Charnia have been found elsewhere in the world, since the 1957 discovery.  Mistaken Point in Newfoundland is perhaps the most famous, but Charnia specimens have been found in Precambrian aged strata in Russia and Australia.  Each of the fossils is essentially an impression in soft sediments made by the outside of the organism, no internal structures have been preserved.

Dr. Wilby went on to add:

“They are absolutely world class.  Some of them are substantial in size but it’s almost impossible to see them in the forest because they only become visible when the sun is at the right angle.”

It has taken five years, but the research team have uncovered many more fossils and isotopic dating has been used to confirm the age of the rocks within which they [the fossils] have been deposited as definitely from the Precambrian.

“The fossils at Charnwood were considered so important because it was the one place in the world where we could definitively say fossils were of Precambrian age,” added Dr Wilby.

Had the young  Sir David, taken a wander around the Charnwood Forest area, perhaps  intrigued by the ancient layered strata, who knows what he might have uncovered.  However, during his long career, the naturalist and broadcaster has had the honour of having a number of extant and extinct organisms named after him.  Perhaps he won’t mind missing out on the discovery of Charnia, only a few miles from his boyhood home.

Many happy returns Sir David.

Everything Dinosaur Supports the Renal Unit at Birmingham Children’s Hospital

Staff at Birmingham Children’s Hospital (West Midlands, England), were holding an open day so that children and their parents/guardians could see some of the work that the Renal Unit does before they themselves were admitted for treatment.  Going into hospital can be a bit of an ordeal, and the nursing team wanted to highlight the importance of strong, healthy bones and eating the right foods, taking the right medicines and taking good care of yourself.  The team hit upon the idea of getting the children to look at the bones of dinosaurs and learning all about prehistoric animals, using dinosaurs and their fossilised bones to get some important points across.

The experts at Everything Dinosaur were contacted and team members busied themselves by sorting out the information and the resources the hospital needed to help make their “bone themed” open day a success.  As well as providing lots of writing and drawing materials, fossil find dig kits were supplied so that the children could experience what it is like to excavate dinosaur bones, using very similar items to those tools we actually use when working at a dig station in the field.

A Couple of Budding Palaeontologists Getting to Grips with the Dig Kits

Children at Birmingham Children’s Hospital learn about their bones by studying dinosaurs.

Picture Credit: Birmingham Children’s Hospital

The Patient Information Day at Birmingham Children’s Hospital was held on Saturday 7^th April, it went really well and the dinosaurs proved to be a big hit with the children and the grown ups too.  The Birmingham Children’s Hospital is one of the United Kingdom’s leading hospitals for the treatment of rare diseases.  The dedicated staff work very hard to help and assist the patients in every way that they can.  Everything Dinosaur team members were happy to help and some of the busy staff at the hospital very kindly sent us some photos of the children and the adults having fun as they played with the kits, excavated dinosaurs, built models and generally got to grips with all things Dinosauria.

Dinosaurs Inspire Anti-Bullying School Poster

On a recent school visit to work with Year 1 and Year 2 children, teaching about dinosaurs and fossils, an anti-bullying poster was spotted in the school hall and we thought it was worth taking a picture of it and displaying it on the Everything Dinosaur blog.

Getting the message across that bullying will not be tolerated is very important.  We applaud all efforts to help stop and indeed prevent bullying in schools.  This dinosaur themed poster says it all.  We thought that it was a very clever poster so top marks to the school staff!

Dinosaurs Inspire an Anti-Bullying Poster

Make Bullying Extinct!

Earth Day April 22nd 2013

Today, April 22nd is Earth Day, an annual event which raises awareness for the need to be concerned over our environment, climate change and the fragility of our planet.  This day is marked by schools, colleges, environmental groups, lobbyists, governments and other organisations who demonstrate their support for environmental protection.  We share our home with an estimated eight million other species (not including bacteria and other micro-organisms), many of these species are threatened with extinction and it has been stated that our planet is in the midst of another mass extinction event.

There always are extinctions, a background level, however, there is a growing body of evidence to support the theory that extinction rates are accelerating.  Conservative estimates suggest that between five and fifty species are becoming extinct every day.  Put simply, from today until the end of the year, perhaps more than 12,000 species will have become extinct, died out forever.  The rate of loss is very difficult to calculate, however, if we look at just two classes of animals – Aves (birds) and Mammalia (mammals), it has been estimated that today there are about 13,400 living species.  At least one hundred species of birds and mammals have become extinct over the last Century or so.  The rate of extinction seems to be escalating due to pressures placed on the planet by a number of factors such as the rapidly increasing human population, loss of habitat and global climate change.  The extinction rate is many thousands of times faster than the normal background rate attributed to natural selection.

Many biologists and other scientists have speculated that this period in Earth’s history – the Holocene Epoch, could make another mass extinction event – the “Sixth Extinction” to add to the previous “Big Five” – Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous.

Everything Dinosaur is doing its bit, we have a programme of school visits this week.  We will be working with hundreds of primary aged school children exploring fossils and extinction events.  Along with the likes of cyanobacteria, our species is one of those “touchstone species” we refer to, as we are able to influence our environment and change the climate.  Events like Earth Day, a worldwide celebration of our planet’s diversity, helps to raise awareness of our pivotal role, one that we can all take part in, to help safeguard the rich and varied life on Earth that we share our home with.

Pupils Study Dinosaurs at School

For children at a local school, this spring term has had them focusing on all things Dinosauria as studying dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals was their term topic.  Given the weather we have had in March, it might have been more appropriate to have studied the Ice Age, but at least the school children did manage to get their hands on a Woolly Mammoth tooth during a visit from one of the Everything Dinosaur team members.

The shape of fossil teeth can help scientists to understand a little more about what extinct creatures might have eaten and the eager young palaeontologists were keen to demonstrate their knowledge of herbivores and carnivores.  During a break in the teaching activities, our team member was given a quick tour of the school’s very own dinosaur land.  The wildlife area at the back of the playground had been converted into a “Jurassic Park” with brightly coloured dinosaur cut-outs adorning  this fenced in area.  There was a Diplodocus, (a herbivorous dinosaur), as we were informed by one enthusiastic pupil and propped up against the fence there was a meat-eating dinosaur plus a very fierce looking Triceratops complete with horns and sharp teeth.

 The School Triceratops

Colourful school Triceratops.

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

The pupils got the chance to examine some Triceratops teeth (T. horridus) and to compare them to the teeth of other dinosaurs who ate different types of food.  Imagining a dinosaur with a tongue about as tall as you are, is quite helpful when it comes to Key Stage 1 school children working out where in a food web might a Triceratops be placed.

Alongside the Triceratops, was another plant-eating dinosaur which the children were delighted to show off.  It was a Stegosaurus, complete with very striking orange plates running along its back.

The Stegosaurus Cut-Out Dinosaur

A very brightly coloured Stegosaurus.

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

Perched high in a nearby tree, keeping a close eye on the proceedings was a large Pterosaur (flying reptile).  The red crest and neck of this toothless Pterosaur made the cut-out stand out against the branches.  It is very likely that Pterosaurs had excellent colour vision, perhaps this was a flying reptile depicted in its mating regalia ready to display to any passing female Pteranodons should any fly by.

The Pterosaur (Pteranodon longiceps)?

A Pterosaur with its colourful neck and head crest.

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

It seems that for the duration of the spring term, this part of the school playground has been turned into the children’s own dinosaur theme park.  Such an imaginative use of odd cuts of wood and spare paint, that was greatly appreciated by the children.  We explored what we do and what we don’t know about the colour of extinct creatures during our morning visit and the school children were very eager to display their knowledge and to talk about the dinosaur themed activities that they had been doing.

It seems that this spring term topic has been a big success, the enthusiastic teaching team using the dinosaurs theme to help develop the children’s numeracy, literacy and artistic skills.  Look out Steven Spielberg, you may have some challengers when it comes to designing the prehistoric animals that are going to feature in next year’s “Jurassic Park IV”!

New Dinosaur Themed Puzzles – Have You Evolved Enough to Solve Them?

More puzzles have been added to the Everything Dinosaur product range.  After the completion of the  testing programme four travel puzzles/games have been approved and have been posted up on the company’s website.  The puzzles include a magnetic Tyrannosaurus rex jigsaw, plus a dinosaur themed magnetic pyramid puzzle, dinosaur draughts and a magnetic dinosaur themed brain teaser.

The dinosaur draughts (dinosaur checkers), along with the other three items are designed to played on the move, to help keep young palaeontologists occupied on car, boat or plane journeys.  In the dinosaur draughts game, one set of counters has a picture of a Triceratops, these are pitted against the opposing counters that have an image of a T. rex on them.  It seems that this travel game actually reflects real dinosaur conflicts, as palaeontologists are fairly confident that based on substantial fossil evidence, T. rex and the herbivorous Triceratops really did battle it out.

The Dinosaur Checkers (Dinosaur Draughts Game)

T. rex versus Triceratops

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

These travel games are light, pocket-sized and great for keeping budding young palaeontologists occupied on journeys.  They are suitable for children from four years and upwards and all the puzzles except the checkers can be played by an individual.  When these items were on test with our field testers, one of the ways in which the puzzles such as the Pyramid Magnetic Brain Teaser puzzle (picture below) could be adapted for a multi-player format  was to time how long each child took to solve the puzzle.  The winner was the one with the quickest time.  The puzzles are actually quite hard, there are thousands of possibilities but only one solution that lines up all the pictures of the Stegosaurs, Velociraptors and Iguanodons in the correct way.

Dinosaur Themed Pyramid Magnetic Brain Teaser

Tougher than it looks!

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

The team members at Everything Dinosaur are proud of their educational games that they sell.  Each one has to be approved by the teachers/dinosaur experts in the company and of course they have to have an appropriate dinosaur theme.

To celebrate the addition of these new puzzles and games, over the weekend a new banner for the Everything Dinosaur website was created that features some of these new products.

Dinosaur Themed Puzzles and Educational Games

Dinosaur Themed Educational Puzzles and Games.

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

Just click on the banner image to be taken to the educational games section of the Everything Dinosaur website.  We look forward to adding more products over the next few weeks.

Wishing All our Customers a Happy Easter

Another busy day in the office with Everything Dinosaur today.  Lots of new products to sort out and our team members are working hard to ensure we stay on top of the orders so that they can be despatched promptly after the holidays.  However, we did make the time to create a new banner for the Everything Dinosaur homepage, so that we could wish all our website visitors a Happy Easter.

Wishing Everyone a Happy Easter

Wishing everyone a Happy Easter.

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

The rather soft and cuddly Tyrannosaurus rex about to eat the Easter egg is the one from the “DIY Dinosaur” craft kit that the company recently added to its product range after field testing.  In the next few days or so we have to add another ten products, this will keep our IT team busy.  We then have the reviews to write up and sort out onto our social media pages – all in a day’s work for us at Everything Dinosaur, how “eggciting”!  Still it keeps us out of mischief and we do have a lot of paperwork and other things to catch up with and ther are sponge cakes and cream cakes available to keep us going.

Postal Strike and Bank Holidays do not Deter Everything Dinosaur

With the long weekend due to the Easter Bank Holidays and the strike by more than 2,000 postal workers in the UK, there can be delays and other difficulties expected in the country’s mail handling systems for the next few days.  However, team members at Everything Dinosaur are doing all they can to minimise any potential disruption to the delivery of their customer’s parcels.

Following a ballot, members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) have gone on strike at 370 crown Post Offices in the UK, this morning.  The staff are in dispute with management over proposed changes to the branch network, branch closures, pay and conditions.  This industrial action is likely to cause widespread disruption and delays in the processing and handling of parcels and other mail items.  The strike also coincides with two Bank Holidays when no mail deliveries or collections are made, so a back log of unprocessed mail is very likely to build up.   In addition, new pricing tariffs being introduced by Royal Mail on Tuesday April 2nd will potentially cause further difficulties as staff adjust to the new prices and handling of parcels policy.

In response, to these potential problems team members at Everything Dinosaur have volunteered to work throughout the Bank Holiday weekend.  Staff came into the office on Friday (Good Friday) and made sure that any orders placed Thursday evening, Friday and early Saturday morning were packed and despatched and received into the postal network by 10am Saturday 30th April.  This action by Everything Dinosaur team members permitted all parcels to be collected Saturday morning by Royal Mail, it will hopefully help to minimise any delays in delivery.

Staff at Everything Dinosaur will also ensure that any orders placed before 12 noon on the Saturday are packed and despatched and placed in the hands of the Post Office.  Team members are on stand by to drop off parcels in person, this too will help to minimise any delays.  Unfortunately, the industrial action also coincides with it being the last day of the month over the weekend, Post Offices are likely to be busier than usual as motorists come in to get new tax discs.

A spokesperson for Everything Dinosaur commented:

“We are all working very hard at the moment to try to reduce the impact of the industrial action and other issues surrounding the management and distribution of parcels in the UK.  It is likely that delays in the UK would also have an effect on the speed of delivery of parcels to customers overseas, however, our customers can be assured that we are doing all we can to minimise any disruption to deliveries.”

Everything Dinosaur is currently exploring a number of other delivery services and contingency plans have been put in place to ensure that parcels can still be sent out using other couriers, it is our intention to operate alternative parcel handling services and some of these will be in place from Tuesday April 2nd onwards.  However, due to circumstances largely out of Everything Dinosaur’s control, there may be some delays to orders that have been requested to be sent by First Class, Second Class and other Royal Mail delivery services.

Everything Dinosaur – Doing All it Can to Minimise Any Potential Disruption

Committed to helping our customers.

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur