A Dino Too Big for the Bed
There’s a new dinosaur in town, and it’s so huge it hardly fits in its house. A farmer in Argentina found some crazy-big bones in his field, and called in the paleontologists – scientists who dig up really, really old stuff. They named it the titanosaur since it’s so big: the thigh bone (top part of the leg) is 4 metres long! There were bones from 8 different titanosaur bodies, which they strung together to make one 40 metre-long skeleton. It’s so long that at the American Museum of Natural History, even with the body taking up two rooms, its tail sticks out the door a way. Not to mention that this dino stood about 15m tall, and the ceiling is only 6m high. It’s hard to tell from the size how much the titanosaur weighed: after all, a puppy weighs much more than a chicken the same size. But scientists guess that this giant weighed just over 60,000 kg (this is about 500 Mr Riley's.) Let’s be glad the skeleton weighs much less, or he’d fall right through the floor.
Wee ones: What numbers would you say to count the 8 titanosaurs?
Little kids: The titanosaur moved into the museum in January. If it’s now March, during how many calendar months has it “lived” in the museum? Bonus: If the room were 27m long, how much tail would still stick out the door?
Big kids: The titanosaur is about 75 million years old! Can you “spell” that number in digits?
Wee ones: What numbers would you say to count the 8 titanosaurs?
Little kids: The titanosaur moved into the museum in January. If it’s now March, during how many calendar months has it “lived” in the museum? Bonus: If the room were 27m long, how much tail would still stick out the door?
Big kids: The titanosaur is about 75 million years old! Can you “spell” that number in digits?
Questions
Wee ones: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Little kids: 3 months: January, February, March. Bonus: 13m.
Big kids: 75,000,000.
Little kids: 3 months: January, February, March. Bonus: 13m.
Big kids: 75,000,000.
Answers:
Wee ones:
Little kids:
Big kids:
The sky’s the limit:
Little kids:
Big kids:
The sky’s the limit: