Paleontology Adventure 2

We have had a great week learning all about dinosaurs from dinosaur extremes to dinosaur adaptions.  We even talked about how the dinosaurs became fossils.

On Monday we talked about dinosaur extremes. We found the biggest, smallest, longest, smartest, and most ferocious (just to name a few) dinosaurs in the museum. We also discussed dinosaur hip structures and learned about the reasons dinosaurs are different from reptiles. Later, we created our own story about what happened to the dinosaurs.

Tuesday, we learned about how fossils form, and we looked at some real fossils in the museum’s hands-on cases! We played a fossil game where we pretended to be animals then drew cards to choose our fate. We learned that animals only sometimes become fossils, and for various reasons such as being eaten by another animal or being washed away by water, many animals do not make it to the fossil stage. Our craft on Friday was fantastic faux fossils. We created 3-D fossils using  various materials to mimic fossilized animals and plants.

On Wednesday we discovered the many interesting adaptations that the dinosaurs had. We took a tour of the second floor to view some of the eyes, claws, teeth, spikes, and horns of various dinosaurs. We also had a demonstration on gastroliths (stones swallowed by dinosaurs that helped in the breaking down of their food). There was also a heard of stegosaurs in the museum on Wednesday! We created our own plates and claws using paper products to create a stegosaurus costume.

 

 

Thursday was all about dinosaur tracks. We viewed a set of dinosaur tracks. One of the sauropod tracks stopped and appeared to be surrounded by a group of theropod tracks. In our journals, we recorded what we think happened in the scene. We also used small model dinosaurs and clay to create dinosaur trace fossils.