101 Fun Facts About Dinosaurs: A Set of Seven 15-Minute Books, Educational Version

By Caitlind L. Alexander

Who created the word dinosaur?
How big was an apatosaurus’ brain?
What was strange about iguanodon’s hands and feet?
Was spinosaurus bigger or smaller than tyrannosaurus rex?
How many front teeth did stegosaurus have?
What was strange about triceratops’ skin?
What were the holes in t. rex’s skull for?
How much weight could t. rex’s arms carry?

Learn the answer to these questions and many more fun facts in this group of seven 15-Minute Books. Dinosaurs are some of the strangest and most fascinating creatures the Earth has ever seen. Surprise your friends, and even your parents with these fun facts.

This compilation includes the following 15-minute books:
14 Fun Facts About Dinosaurs
14 Fun Facts About Apatosaurus
14 Fun Facts About Iguanodon
14 Fun Facts About Stegosaurus
14 Fun Facts About Spinosaurus
14 Fun Facts About Triceratops
14 Fun Facts About Tyrannosaurus Rex

Ages 8 and up.
Educational Versions Include exercises designed to meet Common Core Standards.

LearningIsland.com believes in the value of children practicing reading for 15 minutes every day. Our 15-Minute Books give children lots of fun, exciting choices to read, from classic stories, to mysteries, to books of knowledge. Open the world of reading to a child by having them read for 15 minutes a day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LearningIsland.com
• Release date: Jan 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311829184

Caitlind L. Alexander

Caitlind Alexander is the author of over 60 books for children, including the Jamie and Kendall Broderick Mystery series, the 14 Fun Facts and 101 Fun Facts series, the Wonderful World of Animals Series, and the Miss Jones series. She lives in California where she loves to visit historic places and learn about new things. She also loves to travel and has been all over the world.

Book preview

They are some of the strangest and most fascinating animals that have ever been found on Earth! Dinosaurs! The first ones were discovered just 170 years ago, and ever since we have tried to discover more and more about them. Here are some things we have found out about dinosaurs.

Sir Richard Owen

Fact 1: The word dinosaur was created in 1842.

The word dinosaur means terrible lizard in Greek. The word was created in 1842 by Richard Owen. He was a paleontologist from Britain. In 1881 he helped to create the British Museum of Natural history.

Richard Owen studied many animals, both current and extinct ones. He also wrote many scientific papers about the animals he dissected. Because of this, he was a very well known scientist in England during his lifetime.

Eoraptor (Eva K.)

Fact 2: Scientists think that eoraptor was the ancestor of all the dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs didn’t come from many different animals. Instead, they all descended from one type of animal, the eoraptor.

Eoraptors were small animals that lived during the middle of the Triassic period. They were about three feet (1 meter) long and ran around on two feet. They also liked to eat meat.

Smilosuchus, a phytosaur (Nobu Tamura)

Fact 3: Dinosaurs evolved because there was a mass extinction of many of the animals that came before them.

When the dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago, it was not the first time there had been a mass extinction of the animals on earth. About 200 million years ago there was another huge die off. This one is called the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event.

Before this extinction, during the Triassic period, there were a lot of animals roaming the earth. These animals included archosaurs, phytosaurs, and many other groups.

When these animals died off, the main animals left were crocodylomorphs, dinosaurs, and pterosaurs, among a few others. With so few animals on earth, it left room for the dinosaurs to evolve.

(Eamezaga)

Fact 4: There are over 1,000 dinosaur species that have been discovered.

Only 50 years ago, scientists thought there were only a few kinds of dinosaurs. Then in the 1970s, many new dinosaurs were found. Suddenly dinosaurs became popular again and many more people began to study paleontology and go out in search of fossils.

Scientists began digging up more and more dinosaur fossils. They would match the fossils with the dinosaurs that were already known. If there were any differences, the scientists could decide that this bone belonged to a new species. They would write up a paper on what they thought the differences were, and then name the new species.

Because scientists like to discover new dinosaurs, they will often write papers about dinosaurs even though they have only discovered a single bone from that dinosaur. They will compare that bone to all the other bones that have been discovered and explain why they think it is different. Then they can say that it belongs to a new dinosaur and name it.

Ornithischian or bird-hipped dinosaur (Ballista)

Fact 5: Dinosaurs have two types of hips.

All dinosaurs have one of two types of hips. They are either ornithischian or saurischian.

Ornithischian means bird-hipped. Early scientists thought this group of dinosaurs had hips shaped like birds. Saurischian means lizard-hipped. These dinosaurs had hips that were shaped similar to those of lizards.

Interestingly, birds actually evolved from the lizard-hipped dinosaurs!

(C. Alexander)

Fact 6: Many dinosaurs were smaller than humans.

When many people think of dinosaurs, they often think of huge creatures. The truth is that many dinosaurs are smaller than humans.

Smaller dinosaurs aren’t as exciting as the huge ones, so they don’t get as much attention. It is often more exciting to see the big huge animals. It is also easier to spot large animal bones on a dig, than it is to find the small, tiny ones. Smaller bones from smaller dinosaurs are also broken up easier. That means fewer of them stay whole long enough to fossilize, so there may be fewer fossils to find.

(C. Alexander)

Fact 7: Sauropods were the biggest dinosaurs.

Sauropods are plant eating dinosaurs that walk on four feet. Brachiosaurus, apatosaurus, and diplodocus are all sauropods. Some sauropods were over 110 feet (33.5 meters) long and weighed 110 tons (100 tonnes). That’s about the weight of 14 empty school buses! A few bones have been found that suggest there might have been even bigger sauropods. We don’t have enough bones yet to know how big they really were though.

Scientists think that their size helped these big dinosaurs to survive. Bigger dinosaurs get attacked by meat eaters less often than smaller ones. Also, it is easier for a huge sauropod to digest tough plants. The longer something stays in your digestive tract, the longer your body has to absorb nutrients from it. And believe me; it took a long time for food to get from a sauropod’s mouth to the other end!