How big were dinosaurs?
Listing Details
Concepts
dinosaur sizes
Time needed
- < 30 minutes
Age
3-5
Setting
Outdoors
Materials Needed
- 2 stakes
- 2 plastic pylons or a ball of yarn (optional)
Doing the activity!
Safety: Be cautious around roads and parking lots with moving vehicles.
While on a walk or a drive, look for various objects that could be the size of different dinosaurs.
Use the chart below to guide your discoveries; for example, a Compsognathus would be the size of a duck, a Tyrannosaurus Rex would be as tall as a three story building and a Diplodocus would be as long as two city buses put together.
|
Name |
Length |
|
Compsognathus |
0.8 m (~2.5’) |
Investigate more!
Go to a park and pace out the length of different dinosaurs with the stakes, pylons or an appropriate length of yarn.
What's happening?
The word "Dinosaur" comes from the Greek meaning "Terrible Lizard".
Scientists have studied dinosaurs since their fossils were discovered in 1841. Since then, over 900 different types of dinosaurs have been discovered.
Dinosaurs lived on Earth for approximately 150 years, from about 225 million years ago until about 65 million years ago, when they became extinct.
Dinosaurs varied in size but they all had the following characteristics: had 2-4 legs, had legs under their bodies, laid eggs, couldn\'t fly (the flying creatures often mistaken for dinosaurs are actually in a separate class known as Pterosaurs), couldn\'t live in water, had no fur, had long tails, had small ears that didn\'t poke out of their heads and are extinct.
Discuss
- Are dinosaurs alive today?
- How do we know that dinosaurs actually existed?
- Were all dinosaurs extremely big?
Why does it matter?
Although dinosaurs are now extinct, if they were alive today they would take up a lot of room! In fact, a Tyrannosaurus Rex was approximately as long as 7 people lying down and as tall as a 3-storey building.
Because they were so big, dinosaurs would have needed a lot of food to survive. Based on this, some scientists believe that a major loss of plants and vegetation could have contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs.
