BACKGROUND:
Many children's books on fossils are difficult
to write. Weaving fact with imagination can imprint wrong
concepts in a child's mind that can remain for a lifetime.
Children can easily make the transition from fact to fantasy if it is
pointed out. When reading a book that is fiction statements
like, "This is for fun," or "Do you think this is true?"
helps a child to challenge what they read. It is a common
misconceptions, even by adults, that when something is written,
it is true. This exercise uses a book on dinosaurs to make
children think about they they read.
Going Back through Time with Dinosaurs is
about a little boy who wants to learn basic facts about
dinosaurs. His teacher has many misconceptions on dinosaurs and
is frustrates the little boy. The student paleontologist, as he
likes to be called, starts to fantasize the way it should
be. Notice that the student is the "hero" of
this story. We have found that students can identify better with
a character that is their own age. Although the student
challenges the teacher, it provides an opportunity for the student to
use critical thinking skills to weigh fact from fiction.
Dinosaurs are complex animals that are now
extinct. They have left clues through their fossils which
include bones and eggs and trace fossils like footprints and
coprolites. Trace fossils provide indirect information on how the
organisms lived. Scientists are still uncovering new
information that can modify our present understanding.
PROCEDURE:
- Read Going Back through Time with Dinosaurs to students
or have children read the story out loud. If there is a word that
is unfamiliar make sure you define it as you are reading the
story. For example, when you first encounter the word
"Mesozoic" refer to it as long ago, from 65 - 146 million
years ago. Words like "carnivore" (meat eater) and
"herbivore" (plant eater) should be defined as you
read. Other words like "coprolite," can be seen in the animation, so you can easily ask
the students what it is. You may want to add that
"coprolite" is the scientific name and "poop"
is the unscientific name. Other words like cycad,
conifer, and fern refer to plants and you can point to the
pictures for help. Cycads look like a short fat palm tree,
but have funny types of seeds. Conifers are pine-type trees
and ferns are low lying plants that have spores instead of
seeds.
- Discuss with students the science content of the book. The
key science points include the Mesozoic and types of fossils
found.
The Mesozoic is divided into 3 major periods, Triassic (248-206
my), Jurassic (208-146 my),
and Cretaceous (146-65 my). The story brings the student paleontologist
back through each period and finds that there are different plants
and dinosaurs that lived during that time. During each of
these periods, land and its position
changed.
The types of fossils that paleontologists use include bones, eggs,
footprints and coprolites. Some provide clues on what the
animals looked like (bones) and other help provide details of how the
animal lived (eggs, footprints, coprolites).
- The last two pages of the book try to emphasize that after the
Cretaceous the fossils of these big land animals cannot be
found. There are debates of how this extinction
occurred. Some have data that suggest a large meteorite may
have caused a catastrophe. Other paleontologists conclude
from the data that there was a gradual lost of habitat which
caused the extinction of dinosaurs and many other organisms.
But then many organisms did survive and continued into the
Cenozoic.
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