England used to have dinosaurs. Of course they are now extinct, but you can still find fossils on the Jurassic Coast (in Dorset and the Isle of Wight). Some relics are still available to see – there is one dinosaur in Weymouth that you can view, who was so big and fierce, he would have eaten you in two bites!
Dictionary of Dinosaurs is a beautiful illustrated guide featuring firm favourites like T-rex, ankylosaurus and triceratops, as well as lesser-known beasts from aardonyx to zuniceratops. Read up on where they lived and what they ate. There’s no dino left behind in this A to Z. Each dinosaur profile includes a fact file, scale diagram, Latin name and pronunciation, all with eye-popping illustrations. Also find out the different groups and how we know that they existed in the first place. Written by leading palaeontologists from the Natural History Museum.
In 2023, the skull of a giant sea monster was found near the cliffs on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. It was a pliosaur (a marine reptile that scared every creature in the ocean, 150 million years ago). One visitor to the fossil was Sir David Attenborough. The exhibits at The Natural History Museum include parts of the first T-rex skeletons to ever walk the earth, and the skull of a plant-eating Triceratops.
‘Creationists’ are those who believe that God formed the earth less than 10,000 years ago. As dinosaurs roamed the earth around 65 million years ago (scientific fact), there is obviously a discrepancy. When asked, Creationists (mostly in the USA) reply that they are fossils of animals, leftover from Noah’s flood with the ark?
Fun Facts about Dinosaurs
- Baby t-rex fossils show they were really cute, like ducklings with long tails and covered in downy feathers. Not so cute once grown up, mind you!
- Fossil hunters have found dinosaur skeletons huddled together. This suggests that some species used to keep together to keep warm.
- Although we often see pictures of dinosaurs as being grey, many were very colourful like stripes and patterns.
- Chickens are descended from dinosaurs. Paleontologists say if you look at a silhouette of a chicken and dinosaur, you can’t tell the difference.
- Although most dinosaurs ate meat (like the bipeds that ran on two feet), some where herbivores. The four-legged ones you see with horns were plant-eating dinosaurs who would use their horns to nudge fruit off trees
- Although most dinosaurs were small, all dinosaurs (however big) had very small brains, around the size of a lime. They weren’t the crows or dolphins of the animal kingdom, that’s for sure!
Tales of the Prehistoric World
Tales of the Prehistoric World is the ultimate educational guide for young readers on the Jurassic World of dinosaurs. Prepare yourself for jaw-dropping discoveries, scandalous stories and dinosaurs so weird, you won’t believe they’re real! The tales in this dinosaur book are all completely true. Readers will come face-to-face with incredible prehistoric beasts including Aussie dinosaurs that fossilised into gemstones, a prehistoric shark with a circular saw in its mouth and a relative of T Rex, that was found frozen on top of a mountain in Antarctica.
Chapters are broken down to cover the whole of Earth’s history, which also serves an important purpose to avoid potty ‘creationism’ education. Believe in God yes, but the planet is not a few thousand years ago, so don’t teach tripe to children, to fit in with religious beliefs. The book covers The Beginning (prehistoric goo and the first squishy animals), An Explosion of Life (king-sized trilobites, armoured fish and giant bugs) and The Age of Reptiles (spiny sauropods, pterosaurs the size of aeroplanes and musical dinosaurs!) The Recent Past features gigantic snakes, Ice Age mammoths, sabre-toothed cats and hairy primates.
The book also shines a light on the work of paleontologists including Susan Hendrickson (who discovered the most complete T Rex ever found) and Nizar Ibrahim (whose discoveries in the Sahara desert changed everything we thought we knew about Spinosaurus (spoiler: it could swim!) Kallie Moore is a fossil expert who manages the paleontology collection at University of Montana (she even searched for tiny fossils in her playground gravel as a child!) Illustrator Becky Thorns is based in Cornwall.
The Jurassic Coast: A Brief Overview
The Jurassic Coast owes its name to the rich tapestry of geological formation spanning the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. These layers, exposed by natural erosion, tell stories of climates and creatures long gone. It’s a window into a world around 200 million years old. The rocks here, formed over 185 million years, reveal fascinating tales of marine life and the gradual dance of continents. But do they tell us of roaming dinosaurs?
This coastal corridor has offered up some of the most significant fossil finds in history. From ammonites to ichthyosaurs, these relics give a glimpse into the creatures that swam in ancient seas. The most renowned fossil hunter, Mary Anning, found the first complete Ichthyosaurus skeleton here back in the early 19th century. Her discoveries set the palaeontological world ablaze, unearthing secrets of the past and cementing the Jurassic Coast as pivotal in paleontology.
