Younger offspring: If we lived near a stegosaurus’s house and a tyrannosaurus’s house —
Dr. Free-Ride: Did they really live in houses?
Younger offspring: If they lived in houses, their houses would be really big, and if we lived near them, they would be so big that they would scare us to another house!
* * * * *
Elder offspring: There was one that’s a meat-eater that was the size of a modern chicken. Also, parasaurolophus was a plant-eater who ate pine needles.
Younger offspring: Do you know the biggest meat-eater of all was tyrannosaurus rex?
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: I thought it was allosaurus.
Younger offspring: They’re the same size. They’re both the biggest.
* * * * *
Elder offspring: Brachiosaurus was really smart to have nostrils on the top of the little bump on its head so they stick out of the water and he could breathe.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Do you think it had the nostrils on top because he was smart?
Elder offspring: Nah. The nostrils were there because it was designed that way by evolution.
* * * * *
Younger offspring finally told me the words to that brontosaurus song!
Not very smart,
Not very quick,
Not nearly as wise as our friend Moby-Dick.
Brontosaurus means thunder lizard,
So big and heavy,
On land he grew tired.
Not very smart,
Not very quick,
Not nearly as wise as our friend Moby-Dick.
Brontosaurus means thunder lizard.
Slow on land and quick in the water.
If tyrannosauras was on land he might have caught her!
Size ranges of extinct species are notoriously difficult to estimate because of the paucity of specimens available in most cases. Nonetheless, my impression is that T. rex is thought to have been significantly bigger than Allosaurus.
I confess to having remarkably few facts in my head about the sizes (relative or absolute) of various dinosaurs — part of why it’s nice to have kids to be my repositories of such facts (even if we need to work some of the kinks out of a few of them).
Mostly, I was taken with the logic:
X is the biggest D.
X and Y are both the same size.
Thus, Y is the biggest D, too.
I particularly liked “designed that way by evolution”. Nice way of uniting two disparate viewpoints while remaining technically correct.
If in doubt, ask another 5-year-old. Mine says the biggest meat-eater was giganotosaurus, and this site agrees:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/dinos/Giganotosaurus.html
All somewhat speculative, of course, as they haven’t found an entire skeleton yet.
Also, parasaurolophus was a plant-eater who ate pine needles.
Granny OJ could have used one at Village Green to keep the walks clean. Thanks for telling us about the dinosaurs.
The “froggy house” is almost ready for market.
i remember that song from my childhood — i teach preschool now and i’m trying to locate the album… do you know the name of the album where that song comes from???
thanks
s.