Fossils

Today we had a great time hanging out with dinosaurs at the library. We learned a lot about how big they were, different ways we know about them, and how to make fossils.

One way we looked at fossils were some foot print fossils that I made for the kids. I took sand and pressed it firmly in the container. Then I pressed the feet of a toy dinosaur in. I added plaster of Paris and let it harden overnight. Then  I removed it, adjusted it so that I could cover it completely with sand in the container. The kids un-earthed their fossil foot prints and using tools were able to identify them.

If you want to make a less messy fossil, check out this explanation here.

Fun Friday Fact

Could dinosaurs spit?

In the movie Jurassic Park, a Dilophosaurs spits venom in a man's face. Alas, there is no physical evidence that dinosaurs could spit. It takes a lot of muscle to spit and that probably would have left marks on the skeletons of dinosaurs.

There are snakes such as the Spitting Cobra that appear to spit venom, but they really just spray their venom. The have large muscles that allow them to eject venom quite accurately.

Check out this video of a spitting cobra, well spitting. It is under two minutes and very well done.

Fun Friday Fact

Could dinosaurs spit?

In the movie Jurassic Park, a Dilophosaurs spits venom in a man's face. Alas, there is no physical evidence that dinosaurs could spit. It takes a lot of muscle to spit and that probably would have left marks on the skeletons of dinosaurs.

There are snakes such as the Spitting Cobra that appear to spit venom, but they really just spray their venom. The have large muscles that allow them to eject venom quite accurately.

Check out this video of a spitting cobra, well spitting. It is under two minutes and very well done.

Make your own Fossils

Using modeling clay or Model Magic and objects like ferns, feathers, bones, or shells, you can create a fossil.

We just did this at the library and made all kinds of impressions from shells to toy dino prints to car tracks.

Flatten a piece of clay with your hand and press an object into it. You can just stop here and let the clay or Model Magic to dry and then paint it. This is how foot prints are fossilized.

If you are ready for a more realistic fossil, you can use plaster or clay. Carefully roll out another piece of clay about the same size. Cover the object with the second piece of clay and be sure it molds to the object. Gently pull the clay apart and you will have two impressions of your fossil! Once dry, you can paint the clay to look like rock.

Book Review: Dinosaurs Big and Small

I am a huge fan of Kathleen Zoehfeld - I really love all her books. She takes very complex topics and makes the very accessible with out talking down to me.

Dinosaurs Big and Small demonstrates how long and tall dinosaurs were and more importantly to me, she talks about how we know this information. The next question most kids, and adults might have is how heavy dinosaurs were. Kathleen handles this extremely well. Scientists don't actually know how heavy dinosaurs were and can only make some well educated guesses.

The best part of this book is how they measure things. While using standard measurements of feet and pounds for everything, she also puts the measurements in context for kids by measuring in kid units. She also measures in elephants for weight which is a way scientists do to.

I give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

Dinosaurs in the library!

We had dinosaurs in the library today! We had a great time exploring just how really big some of the dinosaurs were and how small some of them were. We know a lot about dinosaurs from fossils so we played paleontologist, scientist who studies dinosaurs, by digging out our own dinosaur clues. Then we got to make fossils.

Here are some ideas for exploring dinosaurs with your own paleontologists at home.

What if you had a dinosaur? Make a habitat for your dinosaur in a shoe box, empty tissue box, or on paper. Cut out magazine pictures, use natural materials (pine sprigs, twigs, rocks) or paint your own food, water, and friends for your dino.

Counting. Use dinosaur shaped crackers for counting. If you find dinosaur shaped fruit snacks you can lay them out in a graph before eating to see which color has the most and which color has the least.

Sorting. Gather all your toy dinosaurs and then group into piles with at least two dinosaurs in each pile. What kind of piles did you make? Try again but make fewer or more piles. Try piling them by what foods they ate or when they lived.

Herbivore or Carnivore? Look at your teeth together. Some of our teeth are long, wide and sharp while others are just bumpy. What do we use our teeth for? What do the front teeth do better than the back teeth? You can extend this at lunch by offering meat like a hot dog and plants like lettuce or carrots. How do you eat different foods? Dinosaurs were the same way. Plant eaters used their teeth to grind leaves (molar = grind) and plant stems up while carnivores used their slim sharp teeth (incise = cut) to tear into meat. (Humans are omnivores – we eat both plants and meat.)

Dig it! Hide plastic dinosaurs in the sand box or a small box with corn meal. Give your child a small shovel, paint brush, a ruler, a sifter, and a hat as the tools of a paleontologist. They can dig the fossils and use the tools to carefully uncover and measure them. As they dig the dirt, they should put it through the sifter to uncover tiny fossils. You can make footprints or scenes with toy dinosaurs as well.

Animal of the Week - Dinosaurs

Image from Gizmopeek.com

This is our Dino Week! Dinosaurs were one of my childhood obsessions! I had so much fun with dinosaurs it wasn't until I was in graduate school that I finally had the thought to become a paleontologist - or someone who studies dinosaurs.

Apatosaurus was my favorite tho we called it Brontosaurus then. Apatosaurus was one of the largest animals ever to live on our planet and they were plant eaters. Measuring almost 90 feet long it dwarfs most other dinosaurs. It's main defenses were its size and tail - it could wipe its tail around and knock other dinosaurs around.

When I was little, Apatosauruses were always shown belly deep in water or in swamps. As more fossil evidence has surfaced, palaeontologists now think they were really land dwellers.

I love how this shows science and scientists ability to change as more evidence is found. If you want to learn more about Apatosaurus, check out this site for young kids.

Dinos in the library

I had a great time today learning about dinosaurs. While I am not sure everyone had fun the whole time, I am sure everyone had some fun. Must have been the wrong phase of the moon, but we had a lot of unhappiness among the participants today.

We learned that dinosaurs are studied by scientists called paleontologists. Some dinosaurs walked on all four feet and the were plant eaters or herbivores. Some dinosaurs walked on two feet and they could have been herbivores or carnivores - meat eaters.

Dinosaurs weren't as big as we thought. Some dinosaurs were smaller than people. We measured out a string to be as a long as an apatasaurus or 80 feet long. T. Rex was smaller! T. Rex was only about 40 feet long.

Paleontologists use fossils to learn about dinosaurs. We pretended to be paleontologist by excavating fossils from sand.

We made a graph of our favorite dinosaur and T. Rex had the most votes.

Mrs. V, the Library Director is going to leave our string up for tonight's Library Trustee meeting.

Rrroooaaarrr!