Ethan Asks About Dinosaurs

Budding young palaeontologist Ethan and his friends at Longmoor Community Primary School in Liverpool (north-west England), have been learning all about dinosaurs and life in the past this term, aided and supported by their Reception class teachers.  Whilst on a visit to the school to work with class 1 and class 2 to deliver a dinosaur and fossil themed workshop, our dinosaur expert was presented with a list of questions that Ethan had prepared.

Ethan’s Questions About Dinosaurs

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Questions About Dinosaurs Prepared at Home

Ethan’s teacher informed us that many of the children had thought of questions about prehistoric animals as they progressed through their term topic.  These questions had been pinned up onto the classroom display board and the eager fossil hunters in the Reception classes had set about researching the answers as they enthusiastically learned about dinosaurs.  Ethan had prepared his questions at home, he had set his own homework.  The classroom was filled with lots of examples of the children’s work, including super writing, “cotton bud skeletons” and dinosaur fact sheets that the children had made.  The classes had even built their own dinosaur museum!

Drawings of Dinosaurs Produced by Reception Class

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

Ethan’s Questions About Dinosaurs

Ethan wanted to know did Tyrannosaurus rex eat meat?

T. rex was definitely a meat-eater (carnivore).  Palaeontologists can get a good idea about what an extinct animal ate by studying their fossil teeth.  Tyrannosaurus rex is regarded as a hypercarnivore, this means that it got at least 70% of its food from eating other animals.  Cats are also regarded as hypercarnivores, which means, if you have a pet cat, it probably loves eating meat as much as T. rex did!

Ethan asked does a Spinosaurus eat fish?

The jaws of Spinosaurus were very long and they were filled with up to two hundred, sharp and very pointed teeth.  These teeth would have been ideal for catching and holding slippery fish.  Palaeontologists know that when Spinosaurus roamed North Africa about 100 million years ago, there were lots of large lakes and rivers that teemed with fish.  Fossils of this large, dinosaur are usually found near ancient sources of water.

In 1975, part of a fossilised jaw of a Spinosaurus was found and it had a bone from a huge sawfish called Onchopristis (Onk-coe-pris-tis) stuck in it.  Palaeontologists also believe that Spinosaurus spent a lot of its time in water, so it is very likely that Spinosaurus did eat fish.  An animal that eats fish is called a piscivore (pie-see-vore).

A Picture of a Spinosaurus Going for a Swim

Picture credit: Davide Bonadonna, Nizar Ibrahim, Simone Maganuco

Pelicans, otters and penguins are also piscivores, can you name any other animals that also eat fish?

Ethan and his friends in the Reception classes at Longmoor Community Primary have had great fun learning all about dinosaurs this term.

Visit the Everything Dinosaur website: Everything Dinosaur.