What Do We Know About Dinosaurs?

Summary
The lesson reintroduces the children to the dinosaurs they have known since kindergarten and explains how scientists are able to gather so much information about animals which have been extinct for 65 million years.

Objectives
• The children will realize and be able to explain that dinosaurs differed greatly from each other.

• The children will understand and describe the way in which palaeontologists gather information about dinosaurs by examining fossils.

Suggested Grades
3rd Grade
4th Grade
5th Grade

Excerpt
Dinosaurs lived on earth during the Mesozoic Era, which is also known as the ?Age of Reptiles?, and have been extinct for over 65 million years, yet scientists, can tell us many things about them. For example, we know that dinosaurs were reptiles. They ranged in size from dinosaurs like the Brachiosaurus which were enormous ? over 100 feet long and 50 feet tall to those, like the Compsognathus, which were only about the size of a chicken.

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