Fossil of New-born Ichthyosaurus Reveals Last Meal

The fossilised remains of a baby Ichthyosaurus have revealed the last meal of this early Jurassic marine reptile.  A group of UK-based researchers, including palaeontologists from the University of Manchester have identified the youngest fossil specimen of a species of Ichthyosaurus named Ichthyosaurus communis.  The new-born, had dined on squid before meeting its demise.  The scientists can’t be sure why the seventy-centimetre-long ichthyosaur died, but it’s short life (and death), have been preserved in the fossil record and its skeleton is helping palaeontologists to learn a little more about the habits of these beautifully adapted sea creatures.

Palaeontologist Dean Lomax Holds the Ichthyosaurus communis Marine Reptile Fossil

Palaeontologist Dean Lomax holding the baby Ichthyosaurus fossil.

Picture credit: Manchester University/The University of Birmingham

The Last Meal of an Animal that Lived 200 Million Years Ago

Preserved in that part of the fossil where the animal’s stomach would have been, the scientists found lots of tiny “hook-like” structures.  These hard, bony hooks come from the arms of squid and this suggests that this baby Ichthyosaurus had caught a squid and eaten it, shortly before it died.  Palaeontologists know that some young marine reptiles liked to catch and eat fish, but this baby “Fish Lizard” dined on squid before meeting its own untimely demise.

An Illustration of the Baby Ichthyosaurus Attacking a Squid

Dean Lomax (left) and Nigel Larkin (right) in front of the Lapworth Geological Museum exhibit.

Picture credit: Julian Kiely

A spokesperson for Everything Dinosaur commented:

“Finding out about what extinct animals ate by studying things found where their stomachs would have been is very exciting for scientists.  They can use this information to help build up a picture about food webs that existed millions of years ago.”

The baby Ichthyosaurus fossil is part of the University of Birmingham fossil collection and it is on display at the Lapworth Geology Museum.

A Replica of a Belemnite (CollectA Belemnite Figure)

CollectA Age of Dinosaurs Popular Size Belemnite model.

To view the CollectA Age of Dinosaurs model range: CollectA Prehistoric Life Models and Figures.

Visit Everything Dinosaur: Everything Dinosaur.

Remembering the Thylacine

Today, September 7th is “National Threatened Species Day” in Australia.  On this day, in 1936, the last known Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) died in Beaumaris Zoo, Tasmania.  Thus, the largest marsupial predator of recent times became extinct.

Thylacinus cynocephalus

The Tasmanian Tiger, sometimes referred to as the Tasmanian Wolf or to be more correct, the Thylacine was once widespread throughout much of Australia and particularly numerous on Tasmania.  However, with the arrival of European settlers the demise of this predator was accelerated and within a few decades the population was in terminal decline.

The Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus)

Stuffed Thylacine (Tasmanian tiger). Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Australia’s Unique Flora and Fauna

National Threatened Species Day encourages Australians to reflect on the unique nature of the country’s flora and fauna and to consider how best to conserve it.  As the day is commemorated, it also highlights the amazing work that is being done by conservationists, researchers, volunteers and volunteers.  It has been estimated that Australia is home to more than half a million animal and plant species, a large number of which are unique to the continent.  Scientists estimate that over the last two hundred years, more than one hundred unique plant and animal species have become extinct and that includes the Thylacine.

Wombat – Unique to Australia but Vulnerable to Extinction

A stuffed Forest Wombat. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Iconic animals, such as the Wombat and the Koala, sometimes called the Koala Bear (even though it is only very distantly related to bears, is classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).  Habitat destruction and the loss of Eucalyptus trees along with severe drought has significantly reduced this arboreal herbivores numbers.

Hope for the Thylacine?

There have been numerous claimed sightings of Thylacines.  Prompted by some plausible eye-witness accounts, researchers from James Cook University have set up camera traps in a remote part of northern Queensland in an attempt to capture footage of Thylacines.  Everything Dinosaur featured the plans to hunt for Thylacines in a blog article published in the spring: Hunting for Tasmanian Tigers.  Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, rained on the researcher’s parade somewhat when they calculated the probability of the Thylacine having survived at being about 1 in 1.6 trillion.

Extension Ideas

• Have the class list animals and then look up their conservation status on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
• Split the children into groups and have them research the story of various extinct animals – animals such as the Dodo, Thylacine, Moa, Passenger Pigeon, Great Auk.
• With the collaboration of the “Forest School” organiser, what practical steps can the school take to set up their own wildlife conservation area.

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Writing About Dinosaurs

Young dinosaur fan Jack wrote to Everything Dinosaur to tell us how much he enjoyed our recent visit to his school.  Jack is in Year 2, shortly to move onto Year 3 and he loves dinosaurs.  Team members at Everything Dinosaur visit schools to conduct dinosaur and fossil themed teaching workshops in support of the national curriculum – everything from Acrocanthosaurus through to Zuniceratops, an A-Z of the Dinosauria.

The Thank You Letter Sent to Everything Dinosaur by Thomas (Year 2)

A thank you letter sent in to Everything Dinosaur by Thomas.

Picture credit: Thomas/Everything Dinosaur

Learning About Ankyklosaurus and Armoured Dinosaurs

Thomas wrote to thank us for visiting his school.  His favourite part in the dinosaur themed workshop was learning about how some armoured dinosaurs kept themselves safe from Tyrannosaurus rex.  He also explained that he enjoyed touching the ammonites and trilobites and learning about fossils.  Some of the fossils we bring to schools are very big and heavy, a number of his classmates were amazed at how big some fossils can be.

Fossils Come in All Shapes and Sizes

Large ammonites preserved on the beach. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Children Bring Fossils to School

During the term topic, several children brought in fossils from home.  These are fossils they collected whilst visiting various places around the British Isles such as Lyme Regis, the Isle of Wight and the Norfolk coast.  Our dinosaur and fossil expert took time out over the mid-morning break to look at some of the items the children had brought in.

Once the workshop had been concluded, a number of follow-up tasks and extension exercises were proposed, we even had some homework too.  During our workshop, we promised to send more information on dinosaurs plus pictures of ammonites for the children to colour in and to use in their non-chronological reports about Mary Anning and fossil hunting that they had been compiling.

To learn more about Everything Dinosaur’s work in schools and other company activities: Email Everything Dinosaur.

Thank You Letters Sent to Everything Dinosaur

The thank you letter that Thomas sent into Everything Dinosaur was part of a class exercise.  The aim of this exercise was to help the children gain more confidence with their handwriting.  Our thanks to Thomas for his letter and also a big Iguanodon thumbs up to all the children that have written to us over the course of the summer holidays.  Our team members do read them all and we then post them up onto one of the walls in our warehouse.  They make a fantastic display.

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.

Ethan’s Meat-eating Dinosaur Drawing

Our thanks to Ethan who kindly sent into the Everything Dinosaur offices, a wonderful drawing of a meat-eating dinosaur.  In a note included with Ethan’s drawing, he explained that his two favourite dinosaurs were Spinosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex.  As he like carnivorous dinosaurs so much he had drawn a picture of a fearsome dinosaur that would have been a carnivore, especially for us.  Thanks for this lovely drawing Ethan.

A Drawing of a Meat-eating Dinosaur from Young Dinosaur Fan Ethan

A very colourful dinosaur.

Picture credit: Ethan

A Green and Pink Dinosaur Drawing

Ethan explained that he had coloured his dinosaur green so that it could creep up on plant-eating dinosaurs and attack them without it being seen.  He gave his dinosaur some red spines and a sail just like one of his favourite dinosaurs – Spinosaurus.  The dinosaur even has a golden horn on its head, that’s a very imaginative dinosaur you have drawn for us.

In Ethan’s note he explained what a carnivore ate and named some carnivorous dinosaurs.  Ethan also described the diet of herbivorous dinosaurs and gave three examples of dinosaurs that ate plants, namely Stegosaurus, Triceratops and Brontosaurus.  He also helpfully explained that all these three dinosaurs lived in America, although Triceratops lived during the Cretaceous, whilst Stegosaurus and Brontosaurus lived earlier, in the Jurassic Period.

Our thanks to Ethan for his drawing and his detailed note.

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.

Schleich Pentaceratops Model Makeover

At Everything Dinosaur, our team members and teaching staff are always amazed by just how creative and clever dinosaur fans are.  Take for example Peter Thomas, a collector of prehistoric animal models who kindly sent to us some pictures of his version of the Schleich Pentaceratops dinosaur figure.  What an amazing colour scheme and such a skilfully painted model too.

Schleich Pentaceratops Model

Schleich Pentaceratops available from Everything Dinosaur.  Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The Colour of Dinosaurs

Despite considerable advances in recent years, palaeontologists cannot be certain about the colours of horned dinosaurs.  However, most scientists believe that these bird-hipped reptiles had excellent colour vision and that their spectacular frills and crests played a role in visual display as well as in intraspecific combat and as defensive weapons against carnivorous dinosaurs.  Peter has opted to give his Pentaceratops a very colourful crest and skull, the flashes of yellow combined with the red tones would have made a most impressive display surrounded by the greens and browns of the forest.

Combining Dinosaurs with Art

Dinosaur models, such as those made by Schleich with their roughened textures and carefully crafted features, provide tremendous scope when it comes to considering a repaint.  By repainting, you can be guaranteed to have created a unique piece of art and after all, not even the world’s most respected palaeontologist can criticise your choice of colours, as no one has ever seen a living non-avian dinosaur.  Horned dinosaur replicas make an excellent model choice for the hobbyist.  These types of dinosaurs, known as ceratopsians, are famous for their ornate head shields and myriad of bumps, horns, and lumps on the heads and faces.  When painted the model can be photographed in a suitable setting or added to a custom-made prehistoric landscape diorama.

The Schleich Pentaceratops Compared to the Schleich Triceratops

One of the enlarged jugal bones with a horny sheath on it can be clearly seen on the Pentaceratops model (cheek area, under the eye).  Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.

Education Extensions

As an extension to a science module involving learning about evolution, fossils and extinction, teachers could challenge students to repaint a dinosaur model.  This brings an element of art and design work into the science curriculum, helping to support the idea of cross curricular touch points in the teaching syllabus.   Students could be tasked to consider the following areas:

• What colour scheme might work best to help camouflage the animal?
• How the habitat/environment might influence the evolution of different coloured animals
• The evidence for the colouration of extinct animals
• Can students use examples of living (extant) animals to justify their chosen colour scheme?

A spokesperson from the teaching team at Everything Dinosaur commented:

“Peter’s Pentaceratops is an excellent example of a repainted dinosaur replica.  The photography has really helped to emphasis the hues and tones that have been carefully blended together to make a fantastic and truly unique dinosaur model.”

The Schleich model range is an excellent choice for this sort of activity, to view the range of Schleich prehistoric animals in stock at Everything Dinosaur: Schleich Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals.

Key Stage 1 Learn About Continents Using Dinosaurs

Another busy week for the teaching team at Everything Dinosaur.  During one of our school visits to deliver a dinosaur themed workshop to Reception and Key Stage 1 children, we were asked by a member of the teaching team to provide assistance when it came to reinforcing learning about the seven continents.  Luckily, our knowledgeable dinosaur experts had prepared a dinosaur themed geography exercise to help link the geography and science topics together.

Linking a Term Topic About Dinosaurs to Learning About Continents (Geography)

Key Stage 1 – dinosaurs and geography exercise. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Dinosaur Fossils Have Been Found All Over the World

Palaeontologists know that dinosaurs lived all over the world.  The world may have looked very different during the time of the dinosaurs, but fossils of dinosaurs have been found on every continent, even Antarctica.  This evidence proves that dinosaurs lived on all seven continents.  As our dinosaur experts know which kinds of dinosaurs lived where, they can use this information to develop teaching resources to help children learn about geography such as the names and the locations of these continents.

The Dinosaur Geography Exercise

A selection of prehistoric animals in the dinosaur geography exercise.  Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The Key Stage 1 children are challenged to put each of the named dinosaurs onto a map of the world, on the continent where the fossils have been found.  Naturally, we provided a comprehensive lesson plan with all the information the teaching team required to help support the children’s learning.

For dinosaur themed toys and games: Dinosaur Toys and Games.

Developing Locational Knowledge

Under the national curriculum for England, children in Key Stage 1 should develop knowledge about the world and develop a basic vocabulary relating to human and physical geography.  A key requisite is to be able to name and locate the world’s seven continents and five oceans.  Our dinosaur geography exercise cleverly links in this teaching requirement and enables the children to demonstrate their understanding by making links across topic areas.

Helpful Teaching Notes are Provided by Everything Dinosaur

A chart to help kick-start a teaching topic about dinosaurs. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Cross-curricular Learning

In the rich and varied scheme of work for the dinosaur term topic at the school we were visiting, the teachers had included sub-topic areas such as learning about Mary Anning as well as learning about how the Earth has changed since the time of the dinosaurs.  The dinosaur geography exercise that we had developed dove-tailed nicely into the teaching team’s scheme of work.

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.

A spokesperson from Everything Dinosaur commented:

“We were able to combine the children’s enthusiasm for learning about dinosaurs with the teacher’s need to ensure that the class could learn about the location of today’s continents.  This was a great way to test understanding and to reinforce learning across different subject areas.”

For further information about Everything Dinosaur’s work: Contact Everything Dinosaur.

Herbivore, Carnivore, Omnivore

One of the key topic areas covered in the Year 2 science curriculum (England), is that pupils should be taught to describe how animals obtain their food.  This permits the teaching team to introduce the concept of the development of simple food chains.  The national curriculum for England gives guidance on science programmes of study, but schools have flexibility in how these key concepts are taught in the classroom.  Dinosaurs and life in the past can provide a class with a highly enjoyable term topic that permits the teaching team to build in a wide range of cross-curricular learning activities.

An Everything Dinosaur Workshop

Designing a Herbivorous Dinosaur – Learning About Food Webs

Our mailbag was full of lovely dinosaur cards.

Picture credit: Great Wood Primary School

Take for example, the term topic recently delivered by the teaching team at Great Wood Primary School (Lancashire), to their charges in Year 2.  Our dinosaur expert observed some excellent examples of non-fiction and fiction writing, along with evidence of non-chronological reporting during his visit to deliver a dinosaur themed workshop at the school.

For dinosaur themed toys and gifts: Prehistoric Animal Toys and Gifts.

A Dinosaur Food Chain

During an hour-long workshop with the Key Stage 1 children, our dinosaur expert introduced a series of extension ideas to help support the scheme of work that had been developed by the teaching team.  One of the topic areas touched upon was establishing the concept that different kinds of animals obtained food in different ways.  In addition, scientists used special terms to describe the diets of animals – herbivores, carnivores and omnivores.

We challenged the children to design their very own prehistoric animal, to label its body parts and to think about what food it might have eaten.  Could they come up with a name to describe their very own dinosaur?  By doing this, we were checking the children’s understanding of the key concepts.

Herbivores, Omnivores and Carnivores in the Dinosauria

A colourful dinosaur drawing from Alice in Year 2 at Greatwood Primary School).

Picture credit: Great Wood Primary School

The children came up with some very creative and imaginative designs.  At the end of the topic, one of the teaching team members sent us examples of the children’s work.  These pictures were posted up onto our warehouse wall and they made a very colourful display.  Having children design their own prehistoric animals is a great way to test understanding and provides an interesting way of demonstrating the key components of food webs, as well as introducing ideas about how animals can adapt to different environments.

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s website: The Everything Dinosaur Website.