All about dinosaurs, fossils and prehistoric animals by Everything Dinosaur team members.
19 04, 2019

The New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs

By | April 19th, 2019|General Teaching|Comments Off on The New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs

A New Book About Dinosaurs – “Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs”

Everything Dinosaur has been sent a new book about prehistoric animals for them to review.  The book is entitled “Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs – The Theropods”.  Written by Rubén Molina-Pérez and Asier Larramendi, the book focuses on the Theropoda, a suborder of the Dinosauria, perhaps the most diverse and speciose of all the dinosaur suborders.

The Front Cover of the “Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs – The Theropods”

Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs The Theropods"
The “Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs The Theropods” (front cover).

Picture credit: Natural History Museum (London)

The Theropoda (Beast Feet)

In this beautifully illustrated book, the focus is very much on the Theropoda (beast feet).  Theropod dinosaurs ruled the planet from millions of years, ranging from the some of the smallest dinosaurs known to science to the mighty carnivores such as Allosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex.  Crammed full of colour reconstructions and illustrations with vivid, user-friendly graphics and text, this book is a great addition to the book collection of dinosaur fans.  Published by the Natural History Museum, we have received an advance copy of this book so we can produce a review of this new publication.

Described as a stunningly illustrated guide packed with everything you could ever wish to know about the Theropoda, this new dinosaur book is aimed at academics as well as the general reader.

“The Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs – The Theropods”

Title: “Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs – The Theropods”
Price: £30 (hardback format)
Size: 288 pages with colour illustrations throughout
Publication date: May 2019
ISBN: 978 0 565 09497 3

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.

19 04, 2019

Preparing for a Question and Answer Session with Year 2

By | April 19th, 2019|Adobe CS5, Educational Activities, Everything Dinosaur News and Updates, Main Page, Teaching|0 Comments

Preparing for a Question and Answer Session with Year 2

This week, sees the beginning of the summer term for schools in the UK.  Everything Dinosaur team members have a very congested programme of dinosaur and fossil workshops to look forward to over the next few weeks and in a few days a member of staff will be visiting a school in Lancashire to conduct a series of workshops with Year 2 classes.

As part of a busy morning of dinosaur and fossil themed activities, the teaching team have requested that we participate in a question and answer session with the budding, eager palaeontologists.  The children will, no doubt, pose some challenging and intriguing questions to our dinosaur expert, however, we have prepared a special question just for them as part of our programme of suggested extension activities.

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.

Our question for the Key Stage 1 children (Year 2) – how did dinosaurs keep themselves clean?

Did Dinosaur Preen their Feathers just like Birds?

Mei long illustration.
Did dinosaurs preen their feathers like modern birds?  If many dinosaurs were feathered, how did they keep their feathers clean?

Everything Dinosaur Providing an Extension Activity

Fossil bones and teeth can provide palaeontologists with lots of information about extinct animals, but evidence from body fossils can’t tell us much about how animals that lived in the past behaved.  Trace fossils preserve evidence of the activity of animals, such as tracks, burrows, trails and borings.  From this data, scientists can infer behaviour such as dinosaurs moving in a herd, based on fossilised footprints indicating the same type of animals all moving at the same pace in the same direction.  However, there is very little evidence preserved in the fossil record about how extinct animals kept themselves clean.

Did Sauropod Dinosaurs Wallow in Mud Like Some Large Mammals?

How did dinosaurs keep themselves clean?
If large mammals like extant elephants wallow in mud then perhaps large sauropod dinosaurs behaved in a similar way.

Our Challenge to the Year 2 Classes

In order to answer some of these questions about the behaviour of dinosaurs, palaeontologists examine the behaviours of animals alive today that are related to the Dinosauria.  By observing how birds and reptiles keep themselves clean, then perhaps the likely behaviours of dinosaurs can be deduced or inferred.

Can the Year 2 children conduct research into how living animals keep themselves clean?  Can they transfer this knowledge to the extinct members of the Dinosauria and suggest ways that different dinosaurs such as Apatosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex kept clean?

Extensions

As with all our dinosaur and fossil workshops in school, we like to provide lots of extension ideas to the teaching team.

  • What can the children do to help the animals that live around the school to help them keep clean?  For example, providing a shallow tray filled with water to make a bird bath – linking to the English national curriculum science syllabus – living things and habitats.
  • Why do we need to keep clean?  Why is it important to brush our teeth?  A link to hygiene and personal development.

For further information about the outreach work conducted by Everything Dinosaur team members: Contact Everything Dinosaur.

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