Happy Birthday Mary Anning

On this day in 1799, Mary Anning the famous fossil hunter from Lyme Regis was born.  Mary along with her brother Joseph was responsible for the discovery of some highly significant fossils from an area of Dorset which forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage site known as the “Jurassic Coast”.

Mary Anning 1799-1847 (Famous Fossil Collector from Dorset)

Mary Anning 1799-1847, Mary’s dog Tray can also be seen in this portrait.

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

Like many children growing up in Georgian England, Mary had very little formal education, but she was able to read and in her later life she taught herself, geology and anatomy as well as becoming quite adept at scientific illustration.

She became well known for her fossil discoveries and she supplemented the family’s meagre income by selling some of her fossil finds to wealthy members of society who were encouraged to holiday in England whilst the Napoleonic Wars raged in Europe.

During her lifetime, she did not receive full credit for her discoveries including the first pterosaur (flying reptile), to be found outside Germany.  For example, as a woman, she was not permitted to join the Geological Society of London, an institute that was to remain closed to women members until 1919.

In 2010, the Royal Society named Mary Anning as one of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science.  Learning the story of Mary Anning and her fossil discoveries is often integrated into the “Rocks and Fossils” scheme of work which forms part of the Year 3 science curriculum in England.

Adalatherium hui – “Crazy Beast” from Madagascar

Scientists have published a scientific paper in the academic journal “Nature” that describes a cat-sized mammal that lived alongside the dinosaurs at the very end of the Cretaceous.  The furry little creature has been named Adalatherium hui and its fossils have been found on the island of Madagascar.  Madagascar started to  break away from the super-continent of Gondwana around 88 million years ago and so animals such as Adalatherium evolved in relative isolation, separated from other populations of mammals on larger landmasses.  At around three kilograms in weight and not being fully grown when it died, it challenges the perception that all mammals were very small during the time of the dinosaurs.

A Life Reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous Mammaliaform Adalatherium hui

Adalatherium life reconstruction.  Although it is thought this animal lived in burrows like a modern badger, the colouration of this life reconstruction is speculative.

Picture Credit: Reuters

“Crazy Beast”

Adalatherium lived around 72 million to 66 million years ago (Late Cretaceous).  The genus name translated from the Greek and native Malagasy means “crazy beast”, as the discovery of skull and postcranial fossil material of this badger-like creature challenges a lot of scientific assumptions about the evolution of mammals during the latter stages of the Mesozoic.  The snout had a large congregation of nerves within it, making the nose of this animal extremely sensitive.  This suggests that sense of smell was very important and therefore, it has been proposed that Adalatherium lived underground, that it was a burrowing animal (fossorial – an animal adapted to digging and living in burrows).

Adalatherium shared its island home with a number of predatory dinosaurs, including abelisaurids, dromaeosaurs and noasaurids as well as at least three species of crocodilians, both ancient forms and distant relatives of today’s living crocodiles (Neosuchian crocodilians).

Perhaps living underground was a very sensible strategy when surrounded by large predators.

Extensions

• Make a list of animals alive today that live in burrows
• What similarities do they have?  What differences can you spot?
• Can you design a dinosaur that could live underground?  What sort of adaptations would this animal have?

Everything Dinosaur Supporting Teachers and Home Educators

For the staff at Everything Dinosaur, the interests of our customers, our team members and our communities are at the very heart of all that we do.  At this particularly challenging time with the continuing Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, we want to do our best to help all those people having to teach children either at home or in school.

We want to let you know that you remain our top priority and we are doing all we can to assist schools, parents, guardians, nurseries and home educators.

To date, Everything Dinosaur has provided hundreds of free downloads of teaching materials and other resources.

Take for example, this free junior word search that we have been sending out.  Aimed at young children with a fascination for dinosaurs, our word search contains seven words associated with dinosaurs and prehistoric animals, can you find them all?

Everything Dinosaur Providing a Free Junior Dinosaur Themed Word Search Puzzle

Everything Dinosaur team members have created a junior dinosaur-themed word search puzzle.  It is available free of charge.

Picture Credit: Everything Dinosaur

The Benefits of Word Search Puzzles

Word games such as word search puzzles have many benefits.  Firstly, they assist with the development of pattern recognition, a key cognitive function in humans.  For young dinosaur fans, our word search also improves spelling, assists in vocabulary development and above all, it is fun.

The word search puzzle (and the answers), can be requested by simply emailing Everything Dinosaur: Email Everything Dinosaur to Request our Dinosaur Themed Word Search Puzzle.

A spokesperson for the UK-based company commented:

“Over the last few weeks, we have all been working very hard to support teachers and home educators.  With many children now at home and unable to go to school, we have been providing lots of helpful teaching resources and other learning materials to help assist with home schooling.”

Extension Idea

How about creating your own wordsearch?  It could be about dinosaurs or any other subject that you wish.  If you are learning about the Romans, why not try creating a Roman-themed word search that you can try out on a family member.  Perhaps, you could record the time it takes for each person to complete the challenge and create a chart to display the results.

Ysgol Maes Owen – Deinosoriaid

The children in Year 3 and Year 4 at Ysgol Maes Owen in North Wales have been studying dinosaurs and fossils this spring term.  The eager young palaeontologists constructed a “dinosaur island” and are researching prehistoric animals so that they can populate their own “Jurassic World”.  As part of  the term topic, the enthusiastic teaching team have challenged the children to learn lots of dinosaur facts and to build a set of dinosaur “Top Trumps”.  We hope our advice about which was the cleverest dinosaur helped.

With four workshops to squeeze into the day, a classroom had to be allocated for the visitor from Everything Dinosaur.  Not to worry, there was plenty of space in the classroom to put all the resources our dinosaur expert had brought and there was still room to have a go at creeping through a forest like a giant, armoured dinosaur.

During wet play (thanks to storm Brendan), Lilly demonstrated her appreciation of dinosaurs (deinosoriaid), she certainly enjoys learning all about dinosaurs as her note (below) shows.

Lilly Shows Her Appreciation for Dinosaurs

Lilly loves dinosaurs.

Picture Credit: Ysgol Maes Owen/Everything Dinosaur

We are sure the footprint measuring resources along with the dinosaur timeline lesson plan we provided will help the teaching team with this exciting topic.