Digging up dinosaurs

Digging Up Dinosaurs

Have you ever seen dinosaur skeletons in a museum? I have. I visit them all the time. I went again yesterday. I saw APATOSAURUS

I saw CORYTHOSAURUS I saw IGUANODON and TRICERATOPS. I like to say their names.

SCOLOSAURUS was just where I had left it. And TYRANNOSAURUS REX looked as fierce as ever. TYRANNOSAURUS used to scare me. I still can't believe how big it is. Just its head is almost twice my size. I'm not afraid of dinosaurs anymore. Sometimes I call them “ you bag of bones under my breath. I can spend hours looking at them. I used to wonder where they came from and how they got into the museum. But now I know.

Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. A few of them were as small as birds, but most were enormous. Some dinosaurs ate plants. Some dinosaurs ate the meat of other dinosaurs. And some may even have eaten the eggs of other dinosaurs. Dinosaurs lived almost everywhere on Earth. They lived for millions of years. Then they died out. No one is sure why they became extinct. But they did. There hasn't been a dinosaur around for 65 million years.

Until about 200 years ago, no one knew anything about dinosaurs. Then people began finding things in rock. They found large footprints. They found huge, mysterious bones and strange teeth. People were finding fossils. They began asking questions about them. Fossils are a kind of diary of the past. They are the remains of plants and animals that died long ago. Instead of rotting or crumbling away, the remains were preserved, and slowly turned to stone.