Biggest dinosaur - the measurements

This week we looked again at that news item about the biggest dinosaur being discovered. In the news report it said that the dinoasaur weighed the same as 14 elephants.

Someone asked the question: how we could know the weight of the dinosaur from a bone measurement?

Suppose we had some weights and femur lengths from animals alive now, we could draw a line on a graph and see where the unknown ones could be. We tried it. We drew a sketch graph, added lines and some of our estimates:

But, as Rozenn pointed out, we needed a bigger graph if this new dinosaur really weighed the same as 14 elephants!

To check the measurements we looked at some data for femur length and dinosaur weight. Together we entered it into a spreadsheet and plotted a graph:

We drew a really good line right through the points:

Like this:

But, as Rozenn said, to include this new biggest dinosaur, we're going to have to make the graph bigger:

Where would the line go now?

And, given that the femur in the picture looks around 2.6 metres (or 2600 millimetres) long, using the graph, how heavy would you say the new dinosaur is?

News - biggest ever dinosaur?

It's been reported that a really huge dinosaur has been discovered in Argentina, possibly the biggest ever found!

The eggs are laid!

Year 4 have been busy creating realistic shells for their dinosaur eggs. They chose the colours carefully and used the brush to get a dappled effect:

Next came the stage of adding a few realistic cracks onto the shell:

And finally laying them carefully in their nests in the entrance.

We're hoping their are no oviraptors around and the eggs will be safe over the holidays!

Dino Digestion

Herbivorous dinosaurs could not chew their food as they did not have molar teeth. 

So, instead they swallowed stones known as 'gastroliths' which bumped and jumped around in their stomach!  Scientists know this because dinosaur fossils have been discovered with the small stones where their stomach would have been!

Herbivores ripped and swallowed plants and leaves, which then mixed with the gastroliths.  As the dinosaurs moved around, their food got churned up and was easier to digest.

Today we did a little experiment to investigate this...

First you find a tub with a lid, put in some small stones and add some plant material (eg lettuce).

Close the lid.  Secure it with tape and then give it a good shake!

Quite quickly you end up with DINOSAUR MUSH!   How lovely!!!

We didn't lose any and yet there is not much mushy mess in the box.

Meanwhile in 4G...
Gastroliths at the ready, another leaf-turns-to-soup operation was underway:

Plant-eating dinosaurs would have had to have eaten all day to get enough food to satisfy their hunger and generate enough energy to move their big bodies. And without the gastroliths they might have had a bad case of dino-indigestion!

Cracking up!

Today we have been getting ready to decorate our eggs...

We looked at the colours of bird's eggs and had a go at mixing our own pale shades to use as a base colour for our own dinosaur egg.

We also tried out different techniques for creating hatch-like cracks.

 

We are looking forward to perfecting our work and completing our eggstraordinary works of art!

 

 

Continental Drift

Most scientists believe the theory of Continental Drift. Here are a few of our reconstructions of this:

Dinosaur Eggs!

Over the last few days we have been working on a very exciting project! We are making dinosaur eggs.

Each ‘egg’ has a dinosaur inside, and when the time is right they will hatch. What makes it so exciting is that we do not know which type of dinosaur will hatch from its egg, and of course making them is fun.

We have been using newspaper and glue, a technique called ‘Paper Mâché’ to encrust our dinosaur balloons.  

As you can see, its a very messy process!

These will take a few days to dry before we begin the next step.....................