Thank you Letters and Questions About Dinosaurs from the Bright Sparks at Anfield Infants and Early Years School

A busy week for team members at Everything Dinosaur, but we always try to make time to respond to any letters we receive from school children after one of our visits to a school.  Children at Anfield Infants and Early Years School (Liverpool, England), were studying dinosaurs this summer term and a member of the Everything Dinosaur staff was invited in to help the budding young palaeontologist with their prehistoric animal studies.

School Visit

Children in the “Bright Sparks” class were asked by the enthusiastic teaching team, Miss Ledgerton, Miss Hardcastle and Mrs Envis to write thank you letters to Everything Dinosaur and sure enough, our bulging mail bag was stuffed fuller than a Triceratop’s tummy.

Thank you Note from the Teaching Team

Teachers thank Everything Dinosaur for the school visit.

Picture credit: Anfield Infants and Early Years School/Everything Dinosaur

Setting an exercise such as this after a visit from one of our dinosaur experts is a great way to help young children practice writing skills and sentence construction.  It also helps reinforce learning and the recall of information.

Thank You Letters

Amongst the many thank you letters we received, Christopher wrote that he liked looking at Ankylosaurus, whilst Jamie, Cameron and Jack were most excited about T. rex.  They wanted to know why Tyrannosaurus rex is known as the “King of the Dinosaurs”?  A very good question, the name T. rex means “Tyrant Lizard King”, when this fearsome dinosaur was formally described back in 1905, no one had ever seen such a frightening looking dinosaur before, the name was chosen as with its huge teeth and jaws, scientists at the time thought that this was the “King”.  Ironically, T. rex was very nearly called Dynamosaurus, but that’s another story.

Joseph wanted to know when the first dinosaur bones were discovered?  This is a tricky question, dinosaur fossils have been known about for a very long time, the legendary Chinese dragons may be based on scholars from China studying dinosaur bones.  The first dinosaur to be scientifically studied and formally named  in the west was Megalosaurus, a meat-eating dinosaur whose fossils have been found in England.

Everything Dinosaur

Lots of questions about dinosaurs teeth from the “Bright Sparks” of Anfield Infants and Early Years School, yes, Charlie you are right, some dinosaurs did have sharp teeth, whilst in answer to the question as to which type of dinosaurs had the most teeth we think a good contender would be the very big duck-billed dinosaur known as Edmontosaurus.  This plant-eating dinosaur (herbivore) could grow to be over forty feet long and his mouth was lined with rows and rows of teeth all designed to help this Late Cretaceous dinosaur to grind up his food.

A Scale Drawing of the Very Toothy Edmontosaurus

Edmontosaurus dinosaur drawing.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

A few questions on Brachiosaurus were also received.  Brachiosaurus evolved a long neck so that it could feed on parts of trees that other plant-eating dinosaurs could not reach.  Stephen wanted to know how tall Brachiosaurus was?  Some scientists have suggested that the head of Brachiosaurus was held as much as 43 feet off the ground.  This dinosaur was very heavy, it did weigh much more than an elephant, another super question, but how heavy it actually was is difficult to say, perhaps Stephen is right when he suggests in his thank you letter that some of these long-necked giants could weigh as much as 75 tonnes.

Thank you Letter From Lexie

Lexie wrote to say she had a good time studying dinosaurs.

Picture credit: Anfield Infants and Early Years School/Everything Dinosaur

Lots of Questions

Thank you for your colourful letters, Lexie, Poppy and Tilly.  Indeed, we are grateful to all the children, their teachers and the teaching support staff for writing such lovely letters.  We even had a question about the horns of Triceratops, they are quite big, the horn cores on the skull are only part of the horn.  These would have been covered in a horny sheath that would actually have made them much bigger.  Some of the large Triceratops skulls that we have studied come from dinosaurs that would have sported brow horns more than a metre long!

School Children Send in Thank you Letters to Everything Dinosaur

Pupils say thanks for the dinosaur visit.

Picture credit: Anfield Infants and Early Years School/Everything Dinosaur

Thanks Caitlyn, we are glad you enjoyed holding the fossils, we give a big dinosaur roar in thanks for all the letters that we received.  Sorry if we have not mentioned everybody but we do read them all and hopefully we have managed to answer the questions you posed.

Have a happy summer holiday.

To view the extensive range of dinosaur themed toys and games available from Everything Dinosaur: Dinosaur Themed Toys and Gifts.

Children at West Walton Community Primary School Learn about Dinosaurs

Children in the reception class at West Walton Community Primary have been learning all about dinosaurs and fossils this term, under the enthusiastic tutelage of the teaching and support staff at the school.

The budding young palaeontologists have been excavating dinosaur bones out in the school yard, creating pictures and writing stories about prehistoric animals, they even got the chance to produce some lovely artwork.  Spotted in pride of place on one of the walls of the reception classroom was this beautifully constructed illustration of the skeleton of the dinosaur known as Stegosaurus.  When asked, the children were eager to share their knowledge of dinosaurs, explaining that Stegosaurus was a plant-eater, with plates on his back, spikes on his tail and this dinosaur had a very small brain – no bigger than a walnut.

Stegosaurus Skeleton Artwork

The Stegosaurus Illustration in the Classroom

Young children study dinosaurs.

Picture credit: West Walton Community Primary School

Mrs Hughes, one of the reception class teachers explained that the children had been very keen to study dinosaurs this term and when it came to creating the class’s own Stegosaurus skeleton the children were determined to make it as accurate as they could.  She told a team member at Everything Dinosaur who visited the school, that one little boy even measured the ribs in order to make sure they were the right size.

Stegosaurus Illustration

It is certainly a very commendable effort and Stegosaurus is one of the most iconic of all the members of the Dinosauria.  As for the small brain size, the walnut metaphor seems to be universally accepted and team members at Everything Dinosaur have come across it on many occasions.  It is true that when the brain to body size ratio for a large number of dinosaurs is considered, then in comparison with their huge bulk, a lot of dinosaurs do seem to have possessed very small brains indeed.  Using a walnut to describe the brain size of a dinosaur, seems to date back more than one hundred years.

One of the earliest examples, of the “walnut phrase” being used comes from a illustrated book “Mighty Animals”, first published in 1912.  The description was applied to the Late Jurassic dinosaur Diplodocus, not Stegosaurus.

There is a reference to the eminent American palaeontologist Edwin Colbert describing the Stegosaurus brain as “being not much bigger than a walnut” back in 1945 and within Everything Dinosaur’s extensive reference library, we have come across one description from shortly after the Second World War that describes the brain of Stegosaurus as being “only as big as a prune”.

A Scale Drawing of Stegosaurus

An illustration of Stegosaurus (S. stenops).

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Knowledge of Neuroanatomy

As our knowledge of neuroanatomy has developed so our interpretation of intelligence has changed.  The crude measure of body size to brain size, does not necessarily give an indication of “intelligence”, as different behaviours in animals can be seen as a form of intelligence.  For example, the brain of the grey squirrel is small, these little rodents that leap about in the trees at the back of Everything Dinosaur’s warehouse, still exhibit remarkable feats of memory far superior to our own when it comes to locating nuts that they have buried.

Another method of estimating relative  intelligence is the Encephalisation Quotient (EQ).  This analysis is based on the principle of comparing the brain volume of the animal being studied to the brain volume of a control animal with approximately the same body weight.  Here too, the assumption is that animals with larger brains to body ratios are more intelligent than animals with smaller brains to body size ratios.

Cold-blooded bony fish such as the Pacific Salmon have a brain size just one tenth of that of a similar sized mammal, yet these fish are capable of navigating thousands of miles and making their way upstream, overcoming all sorts of obstacles and obstructions.

Although, the likes of Stegosaurus had very small brains, these animals were clearly well adapted to their environments and we as a species have much more to learn about when it comes to estimating relative intelligence and defining intelligent behaviours in the rest of the Animal Kingdom.  After all, Homo sapiens has been around as a species for over two hundred thousand years, but the Stegosaurs as a group may have existed for more than thirty-five million years.

Stegosaurus – Well Adapted to its Environment

A remarkable dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Perhaps the budding palaeontologists inspired by the teaching staff at West Walton Community Primary will one day carry out some research the helps improve our understanding and interpretation of intelligent behaviours in the Kingdom Animalia.

To view models of stegosaurs and other other armoured dinosaurs take a look at the PNSO model collection: PNSO Prehistoric Animal Models and Figures.

Measuring a Triceratops Footprint at Great Wood School

Children at Great Wood Primary have been busy studying dinosaurs as part of their summer term’s teaching activities.  The teaching team have developed a wide range of activities for their young charges and a team member from Everything Dinosaur visited Year 2 to help reinforce some of this learning and to provide some expertise to assist the budding young palaeontologists with their explorations.

What is Your Favourite Dinosaur?

The children had lots of questions, for example, one question asked was what is your favourite dinosaur?  A tricky question but perhaps Protoceratops would be a strong contender.  Known as the “sheep of the Cretaceous”,  a reference to the size of this dinosaur and to the amount of fossils of this dinosaur found in Mongolia, Protoceratops belonged to the same family group of dinosaurs as Triceratops.   An idea to help the school children learn about how to express data might be for them to produce a tally count recording the favourite prehistoric animals of the class.  This data could then be compiled into a bar chart.  The picture below shows a typical bar chart which has been generated following a tally count exercise by Year 2 children.

A Bar Chart Recording Favourite Dinosaurs

A tally count and then a bar chart to plot the data.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Dinosaurs as a Term Topic

Dinosaurs as a term topic, does lend itself to all sorts of extension activities.  Dinosaurs seem to have enthused both the pupils and the teachers at Great Wood Primary.

Miss Bolton and her class have been studying dinosaur footprints.  Scientists can learn a lot from the footprints and tracks preserved as trace fossils.  The class have created a colourful poster display of a Triceratops footprint.  Their poster shows the various ways in which the class could measure the size of the footprint of this four-legged, herbivorous dinosaur.

Pupils Measure a Triceratops Footprint

Triceratops footprint gets measured.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Dinosaur Footprints

The children compared the size of their feet to the scaled up version of the footprint made by a Triceratops.   Footprints can provide ichnologists (scientists who specialise in studying trackways) with a lot of information.  For example, the shape of the print provides an indication about the sort of animal that left that track.  Long-necked dinosaurs (sauropods) produced rounded or oval shaped prints, whilst meat-eating dinosaurs made three-toed prints (tridactyl) prints in most cases.

The direction of travel of the animal can be worked out.  In the picture above, showing the children’s poster, Everything Dinosaur has put an arrow in the top right-hand corner indicating the direction this Triceratops was moving in.  Just like our own footprints, the marks left by the toes show the direction of travel.

With Triceratops, this isolated print can tell us something more.  Triceratops had five toes on its front legs, but only four toes on its back legs.  By counting the toes, scientists can work out whether this print was made by a front foot, or a back foot.  There is a lot of information that can be obtained from studying fossilised footprints.  Dinosaur tracks have been found all over the world, although they are much rarer than fossilised bones.

Footprints are only preserved when conditions for potential preservation are absolutely right.  The ground must be soft enough to hold an impression of the print, but not too soft as the prints will soon collapse and fill in.  The footprints must be covered quickly by something that protects them such as sediment or sand. In these exceptional circumstances tracks made by a dinosaur or even a whole herd of dinosaurs might be preserved.

Prehistoric Animal Tracks – A Trace Fossil Preserving Behaviour

Chirotherium tracks on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

To view the extensive range of dinosaur themed toys and gifts available from Everything Dinosaur: Dinosaur Toys and Gifts.