Looking for something to do with your young dinosaur fans over the school holiday.  Here is a simple and fun recipe for dinosaur chocolate nests, an ideal activity for Easter time.  A super idea to help entertain the children, dinosaur chocolate nests for kids.

Dinosaur Chocolate Nests

Ingredients – (makes a batch of about 8 nests)

Plain or Milk cooking Chocolate 225 grammes (8oz)

Packet of Breakfast Cereal Cornflakes or Shredded Wheat variety

Packet of Sugar Coated Mini-chocolate Eggs

Pack of Small Cake Cases

Dinosaur Nests – a Great Holiday Baking Activity

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

Method

1.  Break the cooking chocolate into pieces and place in a heat-proof bowl.  Melt the chocolate over a pan of simmering water.

2.  Once the chocolate has melted remove it from the heat and give it a good stir in the bowl.

3.  Add some of the breakfast cereal until the mixture takes on a a brown twiggy look.

4.  Carefully spoon enough of the mix into each paper case so that a little nest is formed.  Make sure you push it down in the middle so that each nest has a hollow in the centre

5.  Place two chocolate mini-eggs in the centre of each chocolate nest, the eggs will stick when the chocolate sets. Two eggs is all you need for each nest (we know that some dinosaurs laid eggs in pairs so your chocolate nests would please a palaeontologist) – see notes below.

6.  Then leave the nests to set.

There you are a set of lovely dinosaur themed nests, an ideal activity for young palaeontologists over the Easter break.

For other baking ideas, recipes and for fun party items visit the section of the Everything Dinosaur website that deals with parties: Dinosaur Toys and Gifts.

Dinosaurs and their Nests (a little bit of science)

Many nests of dinosaurs have been discovered, particularly over the last fifteen years or so with the discovery of sauropod nesting sites in Argentina and Europe plus more evidence having been gathered from places such as the famous Flaming Cliffs area of Mongolia.

The first dinosaur eggs were discovered in 1859 (France). The first recognised dinosaur nests were uncovered by an American team of palaeontologists led by Roy Chapman Andrews during expeditions to Mongolia in the 1920s.  Over the last few years, scientists have been able to build up their knowledge about dinosaur reproduction and egg laying as egg-shell fragments, nests, and even fossils of unhatched baby dinosaurs inside eggs have been discovered.

The pairs of eggs laid in our pretend chocolate nests are based on the layout of eggs found in theropod dinosaur nests.  Many theropod nests (tyrannosaurs, allosaurs, Velociraptors, Oviraptors were theropods); consist of a dug out, roughly bowl shaped hole with pairs of eggs laid are in a circle, pushed into the earth and they are laid in pairs.

A Dinosaur Egg Spotted at a School (STEM Learning)

A dinosaur discovery at a school.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Dinosaur Eggs

The laying of eggs in pairs seems to be a unique characteristic of theropod dinosaurs.  No other group of animals either around today or found in the fossil record laid eggs in pairs.  Theropod eggs tend not to be very round, they are rounded at one end with a more pointed end opposite, a little like a loaf of French bread.  The more pointed end is often found buried in the rock which comprises of the fossil, this indicates that the female theropod that laid the eggs, pushed it into the dirt during the process of laying.  This is evidence of dinosaurs showing a delicate touch, in the same way that a crocodile cradles newly hatched baby crocodiles in her mouth in readiness to carrying them down to the nursery pool.

The eggs laid in pairs indicate that dinosaurs had two oviducts (the tube in female egg-laying animals where eggs are formed and through which they are laid).  The position of fossilised pairs of eggs in theropod nests indicate that eggs were laid from the two oviducts at the same time. This would be the equivalent of a double-barrelled shot gun firing both barrels at once.  This behaviour seems unique to theropods.  Crocodiles have two oviducts but they do not demonstrate egg laying in pairs.  Birds, (believed to be close relatives of theropod dinosaurs), only have one functioning oviduct and only one egg is formed by day.  Birds can take several days to lay a clutch of eggs.

Scientists believe that birds evolved only one functioning oviduct and the laying of eggs over a protracted period in order to help them escape from predators.  After all, it would be difficult to fly if a female had a clutch of six or seven heavy eggs inside her ready to be laid.

Other scientists have speculated that the laying of eggs over several days may help the pair bond and this may reinforce behaviour towards brooding and feeding the youngsters as they hatch.  Yet another theory is that with a delay in laying, comes a delay in the time of hatching, some birds end up with a nest full of offspring, but at slightly different ages.  If food becomes scarce then the older siblings can out compete the younger ones and these are the ones that will survive to reach the fledgling stage.

Palaeontologists have a lot to learn about dinosaurs and the egg laying habits, however whilst you contemplate these important aspects of dinosaur behaviour and social habit you can tuck into your own dinosaur nest as a treat.  Help yourself to Everything Dinosaur’s chocolate dinosaur nest recipe.

Half-Term Fun – Ideas and Suggestions

With the school half-term holidays getting underway in the next week or so, it can be difficult finding things to do with the children, particularly if the weather is bad and there is not much you can do outside. Everything Dinosaur team members have come up with some suggestions for dinosaur themed activities during the half-term holidays.

Parents of Dinosaur fans are always welcome to contact the team members at Everything Dinosaur, we would be happy to e-mail over dinosaur quizzes, drawing materials and other items to help keep young palaeontologists amused over the holidays.  We have even put together some ideas on how enthusiastic dinosaur fans of all ages can have a go at building their own Mesozoic landscape – we’ve tried it and it was a fun exercise, ideal for a couple of wet afternoons.

Contact Everything Dinosaur

To contact Everything Dinosaur: Contact Everything Dinosaur.

We have a “contact us” site and you are always welcome to drop our team members a line.  Next week on Primeval (ITV1, Saturday evening), a Mammoth makes an appearance, taking a stroll up the M25 motorway and causing considerable havoc.  The Mammoth depicted is a Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), a species of Mammoth even larger than the famous Woolly Mammoth.

An adult, male Columbian Mammoth could perhaps have weighed as much as 10 tonnes and stood 4 metres high at the shoulder.  This Mammoth inhabited North America and is believed to have existed until around 9,000 years ago, when like many of the large mega fauna at the time it finally went extinct.  One interesting specimen from Nashville, Tennessee has been dated to around 7,800 years ago, indicating that a few Mammoths may have survived in remote isolated areas for a few generations longer.

Woolly Mammoths

The Mammoth had entered North America via Asia over the Bering Strait land bridge (formed when sea levels fell).  Why Mammoths died out is still open to conjecture.  However, by the time of last of these magnificent elephants the last Ice Age was coming to an end and the climate in the northern hemisphere was rapidly becoming warmer and wetter.  The grasslands in the southern range of this animal were quickly replaced by forests, in too short a time to allow these specialist grazers to adapt.  In the north of the Mammoth’s range the ice age melt-water turned their environment into a boggy marsh and tundra, quite unsuitable for large animals to live in.

With their slow breeding rates, the splintering up of the grasslands with the establishment of forested areas and the predation from man, the Mammoths were doomed.  One interesting spin on the theory that the sophisticated hunting methods of “Clovis” Man did for the Mammoths in the Americas is that the dogs these people brought with them carried disease and this also contributed to the decline and eventual extinction of the Columbian Mammoth.

An Activity for the Half-term Holidays

An ideal activity for the half-term holidays is to re-create many of these extinct giant mammals using the Paint and Play Ice Age Mammals Box set.  Each set comes with four famous Ice Age models a giant sloth, Glyptodon, a Sabre-Tooth cat and of course a Mammoth.  Paints and instructions are included and young children can paint their own models to depict these huge mammals from the last Ice Age – a kind of “Pleistocene Paint and Play”.

The Ice Age Mammals Box Set

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Half-term Holidays

Palaeontologists have designed the models, the paints and brushes are included and it is up to you to bring these prehistoric mammals back to life.  The models are based on the actual model sets produced for sale in museums, so if it is cold and frosty outside you can create your very own Ice Age characters on your kitchen table.

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s award-winning website: Everything Dinosaur.

Start of “National Reading Year”  Encouraging Parents to Read to their Children

Today, Wednesday 24th October sees the start of “National Reading Year”  which aims to help more people, especially young people become avid readers.  As part of a series of campaigns that are due to run throughout the next 12 months, parents are being asked to read to their children before bed.

Helping Children with Reading

Many parents try to make time to do this, however, UK Government Ministers urged all parents to make an effort.  To make time for bed-time reading just as they would for time to brush the children’s teeth.  By reading to children in this way, it helps build up an affection for books at early age, hopefully this affection will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

By reading to children, parents can help young people understand more about language and sentence construction.  New words can be explored and explained helping to develop the child’s vocabulary.  The parent also benefits from this exercise, spending such quality time with the children is the perfect way to unwind after a difficult day at work.

The National Reading Year (NRY) will be led by Honor Wilson-Fletcher the Marketing Director at the London Southbank Centre.  The last  NRY was in 1998 and it was criticised for not making a lasting impact on the reading habits of the nation.

Books can help develop children’s imagination and also encourage them to write creatively as well.  It is best to choose a subject that the child is fond of, dinosaur books come in very handy.   There are many story books to choose from and the team at Everything Dinosaur are currently researching more books (approved by our dinosaur experts) to add to our shop.

Everything Dinosaur

A particular favourite is “Triceratops Gets Lost”, this book has been especially designed to help young people learn to read.  The story centres around a young Triceratops that has lost its herd, the book comes with a special cuddly Triceratops soft toy as a “bed-time buddy”.  The book also contains a CD-rom so that the child can have the book read to them and follow the story via a home computer.

Dinosaur themed gifts: Dinosaur Gifts and Prehistoric Animal Toys.

This book is one of a series of two (the other features T. rex looking for dinner), they have been designed for children between 3-6 years and the authors have made sure that the story contains words that can help children expand their word usage and reading skills.