Fifth Grade

Champion Learners

T-Rex to Turkeys

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By: Alicia and Kaylee

Did you know that there are still dinosaurs living among us? Yes, but they might not be what you thought, the dinosaurs living among us are birds! Here are some facts we learned from a Zoom call with the Denver museum of Nature and Science.

Fact 1) Did you know that the smallest dinosaur is the bee
hummingbird?
Fact 2) Even though dinosaurs are related to birds, they did not
sound even close to birds.
Fact 3) Some dinosaurs were feathered dinosaurs but most of them
could not fly like some of the birds we know today because their
feathers were used for insulation.
Fact 4) One of the biggest dinosaurs was the Elephant bird and it was
4 meters tall and weighed about a ton.
Fact 5) Usually the rarest dinosaur were the ones with feathers,
hollow bones, and were closest to birds.
Fact 6) A rare dinosaur were the tiny birds because they went extinct
in 1940.
Fact 7) They’re not turkeys but there was a bird that was half
chicken and half duck that was alive with the dinosaurs.
Fact 8) Birds and some dinosaurs are/were the only animals that had a
furcula (wish bone).
Fact 9) Dinosaurs did not have a snood (which is flesh that hangs of a
turkey) even though they are related to birds.
Fact 10) Another rare dinosaur is the dome headed dinosaur.
Fact 11) A way that scientists at the Denver Museum of Nature and science
collect DNA is that they collect their fossilized poop.
Fact 12) Overtime you can find ocean fossils in a big grass land because the
area may have used to be water.

Why dinosaurs and birds are related
One of the reasons why dinosaurs and birds are related is that some dinosaurs and birds have what we call a wish bone (furcula) which is a collar bone which is connected. Also, some dinosaurs and birds have ridges on their bones which is where their feathers attach to. Both dinosaurs and birds have hallow bones with air going through them unlike humans.

How scientists think dinosaurs went extinct
The theory that the scientists had at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is that an asteroid hit and it hit some land and some of the Pacific Ocean. Which sent a huge tidal wave and a huge cloud of dust that covered the sky. Because of this the animals that were herbivores and some omnivores started dying because the plants were dying because the sunlight was blocked from the dust which made the carnivores die because they ate the herbivores and omnivores. The only thing that was living in the dinosaur era that is still around today is the earthworm. They lived because they ate dead plants and most of the plants died due to the sun being blocked by the dust which helped the earthworms survive.

In conclusion, you may not have seen how they are alike in multiple ways but they are!

Alicia and Kaylee hard at work!

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