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)

Picture credit: Mary Anning Rocks

Mary Anning

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.

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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

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.

Teaching Extensions Associated with Adalatherium

• 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?

For further information about educational resources: Email Everything Dinosaur.

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 and crossword 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 Dinosaur Themed Crosswords

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The Benefits of Word Games

Word games such as word search puzzles and crosswords 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 puzzles (and the answers), can be requested by simply emailing Everything Dinosaur: Email Everything Dinosaur.

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.”

An 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.

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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.

Dinosaurs and Fossils

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

Picture credit: 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.

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Greenhill Primary Palaeontologists

Children in Year 1 at Greenhill Primary (Bury, Greater Manchester), have been busy learning all about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals this term.  A team member was given the opportunity to visit the school to work with the eager, young palaeontologists over the course of the morning.  The first part of the session was based in the spacious hall, the second part of the workshop, which involved dinosaur footprint measuring and finding fossils, took place in the well-appointed and very tidy classroom.

Pupils as Palaeontologists

Year 1 Children Had Created a Play Area for Their Dinosaurs

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

As an extension exercise, our dinosaur expert challenged the children to draw a dinosaur and to label its body parts including the skull.  During the wet play, Nayaab drew and labelled a beautiful pink and blue dinosaur which was then presented to Everything Dinosaur at the conclusion of the morning’s activities.

Drawing and Labelling a Dinosaur

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

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Dinosaur Display Made from Leaves

Lots of Key Stage 1 children and Reception classes have been learning about dinosaurs this term.  On one of our many school visits a dinosaur expert at Everything Dinosaur spotted a colourful display of prehistoric animals that had been created using leaves.   It seems that dinosaurs are even becoming involved in forest school activities, all part of creative, imaginative and thoroughly engaging teaching schemes of work.

A Dinosaur Created from Autumn Leaves

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

A Dinosaur Leaf Monster

A spokesperson from Everything Dinosaur commented:

“We come across lots of wonderful and creative curricular during our visits to schools.  We congratulate the teaching team for combining the term topic all about dinosaurs and fossils to learning about the changing environment and seasons.  This really is a great example of creative cross-curricular teaching.”

A Dinosaur Leaf Monster

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

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Dinosaur Themed Extension Activity for Key Stage 1

Everything Dinosaur team members are getting ready for the start of the summer term (UK).  Staff have a lot of dinosaur and fossil themed workshops and other activities to prepare.  For example, in a few days, a team member is visiting a school to conduct some dinosaur workshops with Year 2 classes and once the workshops have been concluded they have been invited to a question and answer session with two classes of Year 2.

As part of our extension activities to help support the teaching team’s scheme of work, we have developed a lesson plan based around answering the question how did dinosaurs keep themselves clean?

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A Helpful PDF – Dinosaur Extension Activity for Key Stage 1

To assist the teaching team, we have developed a lesson plan outlining the learning aims and objectives.  Fossil bones and teeth help scientists to work out what extinct animals looked like, what they ate and how they moved, but evidence from fossils can’t tell palaeontologists much about the way that prehistoric animals behaved.

Trace fossils such as trackways and burrows can provide some evidence, but in order to answer questions about Dinosauria hygiene, scientists have to study animals alive today in order to get some clues.  By studying living creatures palaeontologists can make educated assumptions about how extinct animals kept themselves clean.

Did Some Dinosaurs Roll Around in the Dust to Help Keep Themselves Clean?

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

A spokesperson from Everything Dinosaur commented:

“When we visit schools, we like to provide additional resources to help support the topic area.   We are happy to provide lots of free information including prepared lesson plans and lesson guides.  It is all part of our extensive programme of dinosaur and fossil themed workshops in schools.”

For further information about the range of science outreach offered by Everything Dinosaur: Email Everything Dinosaur.

Symbiosis in the Dinosauria

Some animals alive today relay on the assistance of other animals to help them keep clean and tidy.  Tropical fish on coral reefs deliberately visit areas where “cleaner fish” congregate and they patiently wait whilst these fish clean them and remove dead skin and parasites.  In Africa, the Oxpecker (Buphagus spp.), a type of starling, regularly hitch a ride on the back of a large mammals, such as elephants and pick dead skin and parasites from their host’s hide.  These birds also catch insects disturbed as the large animals move through the scrub and bush.

Symbiosis in the Dinosauria

It is very likely that these sorts of mutually beneficial relationships between different species occurred in the past and with dinosaurs.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

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Symbiosis – Classroom Extension Ideas

Mutually beneficial activities are termed symbiotic relationships by scientists.  In the picture (above), a statue of a large theropod dinosaur (Megalosaurus) is shown. Since the early days of studying dinosaur bones, symbiosis within the Dinosauria was suspected. Symbiosis is the term used to describe an interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association to the benefit of both.

• Can your class find examples of mutual co-operation (symbiosis) in the natural world?
• Can the class consider ways that pupils and staff at the school co-operate together?

For further information contact Everything Dinosaur: Email Everything Dinosaur.