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FIND OUT ABOUT DINOSAURSRead the article about dinosaurs with your child. Look at the pictures and talk about the amazing facts about dinosaurs. Look up information about more dinosaurs together.

Super big, super old!The word dinosaur means terrible lizard even though dinosaurs were not lizards. Long ago, dinosaurs of all sizes roamed all over the earth. Some dinosaurs were much bigger and taller than elephants and could reach to the top of huge trees and others were as small as chickens.

All dinosaurs belonged to the reptile family and laid eggs. Some dinosaurs were carnivores (meat eaters) with long sharp teeth to tear at meat as they ate animals and other dinosaurs. Other dinosaurs were plant eaters and had flat blunt teeth to eat the leaves of plants.

Something terrible happened that killed all the dinosaurs. Today we only know about them from their fossils (remains of skeletons found in rocks) so we don’t know what their bodies (skin, muscles and insides) were like or why they all died.

BrachiosaurusBrachiosaurus was a giant plant eating dinosaur with a very long neck. It was the largest animal to ever live on earth. It weighed 40,000 kilos and was as long as five big elephants standing in a line and as tall as a four story building. It once lived in Tanzania as some fossils were found there. You can see a herd of Brachiosaurus peacefully grazing in the movie Jurassic Park.

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Tyrannosaurus Rex The Tyrannosaurus Rex was the most feared kind of meat-eating dinosaur. Tyrannosaurus Rex was the best known and most fierce dinosaur that lived about 66 million years ago. Fossils have been found in North America. The fossils and other remains have told scientists a lot about Tyrannosaurus Rex.

It walked on two legs, had a huge head with the biggest teeth of any dinosaur and a long heavy tail. No Tyrannosaurus eggs have been found but they must have been too large for the mother to sit on. When Tyrannosaurus Rex was fully grown it was tall enough to look into an upstairs window.

StegosaurusEven though Stegosaurus was about the size of a bus, its brain was as small as a golf ball. The spiky plates on its back were a metre high and the spikes on its tail were very sharp. Stegosaurus ate plants.

PentaceratopsPentaceratops had the largest head of any dinosaur. Look at the enormous bony frill on its head. The two big horns are above its eyes and the very small horn is on its snout. It was about the size and weight of a car. Pentaceratops ate plants.

FIND OUT ABOUT DINOSAURSFill in the KWL chart about dinosaurs.You will need to copy the following KWL Chart onto a sheet of paper.

1. Write the names of the four dinosaurs and one fact that you know about each one in the first column: K. For example, you could write a fact you know about Tyrannosaurus Rex in the first column of your KWL Chart.

2. Write what you want to know about dinosaurs in the middle column: W

3. Write what you learned about dinosaurs in the third column: L

KWHAT I KNOW

WWHAT I WANT TO KNOW

LWHAT I LEARNED

1.

2.

3.

4.

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