Go on a dinosaur dig! - puzzle activity - Hands-On Science

With this activity student paleontologists piece together a prehistoric puzzle.

Paleontologists learn so much about prehistoric life from uncovering the bones of dinosaurs and piecing them together. In this activity, students will assemble a life-size Deinonychus (dine-ON-ik-us) and then make inferences as to how it lived 110 million years ago.

MAKE A DEINONYCHUS

Concepts: Paleontologists can learn much about dinosaurs by piecing together fossils.

Skills: observing, inferring, measuring, collecting and recording data, interpreting

Materials (per group): one complete puzzle, cut up and stored in a resealable bag (see reproducible); glue; 1 piece of construction paper; a pencil; 40 sheets of unlined 8 1/2-by-11-inch paper; tape; markers, crayons, and/or paint; scissors

Procedure

1. Ask students to respond in their science journals to the following question: How do you think paleontologists find out what dinosaurs looked like and how they lived?

2. Tell students that in this activity they will be paleontologists. Divide the class into groups (the number of groups you make depends on the number of 4-feet-tall-by-9-feet-long dinosaurs you have space to display). Each group constructs a life-size Deinonychus.

3. Give each group a set of the puzzle pieces. Once they put it together, students should glue the pieces down on a sheet of construction paper and number the pieces from 1 to 40, as shown here. (Younger students can glue the pieces onto a fresh copy of the reproducible.)

4. To create the life-size Deinonychus, each group needs 40 sheets of 8 1/2-by-11-inch paper, numbered from 1 to 40. Students then copy the lines from the small puzzle piece to the corresponding large piece of paper (just set aside blank sheets). Finally, groups line up the large sheets on the floor and either tape the sheets together or glue them to a piece of butcher paper.

5. Let students measure the height and length of the dinosaur. Now discuss its physical characteristics. What conclusions can students draw about the habits of this animal? What did it eat? (Its sharp teeth and long claws show it's a carnivore.) What color might it have been? (There's no one right answer--it would have blended in with the landscape so as not to be detected by its prey.) Afterwards share the following information with students: Deinonychus was a quick, intelligent predator. Its long tail helped it keep its balance when chasing its prey. In 1964, paleontologists found fossilized remains of four or five Deinonychus next to the remains of a large plant-eating dinosaur called Tenonosaurus. This evidence has led scientists to believe that the Deinonychus hunted in packs similar to the way wolves hunt.

6. Students can color in the dinosaurs, cut them out, and display them in hallways.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

The word dinosaur means terrible lizard. Most dinosaurs were named to describe something about their physical characteristics or actions. Others were named after the person who discovered them or the place where they were discovered. Ask students to try and find the names of some familiar dinosaurs by putting together words from column 1 and column 2. What does each dinosaur name mean?

Column 1           Column 2

cera (horned)      raptor (thief)
tri (three)        tops (face, head)
veloci (fast)      sauris (lizard, reptile)

LYNNE KEPLER, a former elementary school teacher, is a free-lance writer and elementary science consultant based in Pennsylvania.

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