Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2016 i Click Science and Discovery Magazine for Preschoolers and Young Children

Not all dinosaurs were big, scary hunters. Some were gentle giants, and some were just trying not to get eaten. How did they protect themselves? HORNS You wouldn’t want to battle a dinosaur like TRICERATOPS or TOROSAURUS. They had big horns coming right out of the middle of their faces. These horns could have kept the dinosaurs safe from hungry hunters. But they might have just been for showing off or saying “I’m the boss.” No one knows for sure. SUITS OF ARMOR Some dinosaurs wore built-in armor to stay safe. NODOSAURUS had a back covered in bony plates and knobs. SAUROPELTA had spikes all over its bony armor. Good luck taking a bite out of this dinosaur! DANGEROUS TAILS ANKYLOSAURUS had thick armor for protection. But it also had…

Corythosaurus, Deinonychus, Brachiosaurus— dinosaur names can be a mouthful. Where do they come from? Who gets to pick them? The person who finds or first describes a new kind of dinosaur usually gets to name it. Sometimes the name comes from the place where the fossil was found. Some dinosaurs are named after a person. But most dinosaur names combine Latin or Greek words to describe how the dinosaur looked or acted—even if we find out later that the description is wrong! The word dinosaur itself was created in 1841 from the Greek words deinos, which means terrible, and sauros, which means lizard. We know now that dinosaurs aren’t lizards, but the name stuck, and sauros or saurus still gets used in new names today. Can you dream up your…

If you were a Tyrannosaurus rex . . . You’d use your mighty tail to balance your big, heavy head. You’d have teeth the size of bananas and a jaw strong enough to crush bones in one bite. You’d walk on two huge, powerful back legs. Your short, two-fingered arms could not reach very far—not even to your mouth! If you were a Stegosaurus . . . You’d walk on four legs, but your back legs would be much, much longer than your front legs, so you’d need to walk slowly. You’d be famous for the giant pointy plates on your back. But no one today knows why you had them. You’d eat only plants and lots of them—hundreds of pounds each day. You’d have cheeks (most dinosaurs didn’t) that…

Hi, I’m Penny, and as you might guess, I love dinosaurs. What I don’t love are the goofy ideas some people have about us. Now I know that scientists haven’t figured out all our secrets—and I’m not giving any away!—but they have learned these. Not all dinosaurs were big. Sure, Diplodocus, Barosaurus, and their long-necked buddies stretched farther than two or even three school buses. We didn’t all live in toasty swamps and jungles. Timimus, who was about as tall as a man, and little Leaellynasaura lived near what is now the South Pole. Winters there were long, dark, and cold. But dinosaurs came in all sizes. Compsognathus was not much bigger than a chicken. Dinosaurs ruled the world for more than 150 million years. But we didn’t all live…

Every afternoon after school, Carla loved playing outdoors. Her dad had torn down an old shed in the backyard last year. Now there was a big, wonderful patch of mud right where the shed used to be. That was Carla’s favorite spot. She liked to run right to the edge of the muddy patch and bend down close to have a look. The mud was not too wet and not too dry. It was just right for footprints! If she looked closely, Carla could see who had walked through the backyard that day. Carla knew you can often tell an animal (or a person!) by the footprints it leaves. But one afternoon she spotted some footprints she’d never seen in the backyard before. They looked like this. What kind of…