Both my children love The Dinosaur That Pooped Christmas. I have to admit that at the ages of 4 and 6 they still talk about poo a lot, so of course this series was going to appeal to them! I love the book too and it’s a great picture book and introduction to rhyme. In case you haven’t yet read it: When this poop was fresh in the water, it probably gave off a strong smell that made it seem like a yummy meal. 😍 If the calcium phosphate takes a harder, more dense form, the “wet finger test” won’t work. In some instances, chemical analysis is required to definitively identify the mineral composition. What Are Coprolites? We discovered The Dinosaur That Pooped … series last year and since then the books have been a firm favourite with my two. The Dinosaur That Pooped Christmas made it on to our list last year and will definitely be included this year too. We’ve made a few dinosaur crafts but we wanted to make something special to accompany this festive favourite – dinosaur poo playdough! The Dinosaur That Pooped Christmas I put all the ingredients into a saucepan and gently heated the concoction until it started to look like playdough. I removed it from the heat and let it cool down before lightly kneading it and adding some mixed spice. This gave it a slightly darker colour and also a lovely smell.

We also hadn't realised that the book was one of a series until we'd finished it, and as a standalone it left a lot of unanswered questions related to the gran's obsession with green and the existence of the magic swing.Join Danny and Dino as they search for Easter eggs in this EGGcellent lift-the-flap story! With rip-roaring rhyme and laugh-out-loud silliness, the Dinosaur that Pooped series has sold over 1.5 million copies around the world! George Frandsen (USA) has the largest collection of coprolites in the world. Don’t worry, they don’t smell any more! 😝 The reason for this is that their poop is usually high in calcium phosphate, the same mineral found in bone. This mineral can appear in many forms. It can be hard and dense or soft and porous. This new series is the perfect introduction to the world of Danny and Dino. The poop-filled adventure is written by bestselling author duo Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter!

I placed the dinosaur poo playdough on the table along with a mixture of colourful pom poms, sequins, pipe cleaners and gingerbread people and left it out as an invitation to play for my children when they got home from school. The book had a fantastic story and brilliant illustrations and it had a great poetic rhythm just like the previous two books and I enjoyed it just like I did with the other two books. Knowing which species of creature made a specific coprolite helps us get a better idea of what prehistoric ecosystems looked like. Dinosaurs, like all animals, would have needed to expel waste. Sometimes pieces of dinosaur faeces turned into fossils, which we can find today. These are called coprolites. Some palaeontologists specialise in studying coprolites and use them to understand what food dinosaurs ate, and how they fit into larger food chains. Discover the pooptastic world of Dino and Danny, from bestselling authors Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter!

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The rhymes were good, the beginning tied up well with the unravelling of the finale, and there was lots and lots of poop, which grossed me out, but I'm sure young children would find hilarious. There were three dinosaurs called A, B and C, who ended up losing their world but didn't really seem to care which I also found to be a strange message, but again, young children wouldn't likely notice. Because herbivore feces tends to break a part and decompose rapidly, it rarely survives the fossilization process. So most fossil poo that is found is from carnivores. Coprolites are the fossilised faeces of animals that lived millions of years ago. Coprolites are trace fossils which means that they are not fossils of the animal’s actual body, but of something that came from the animals body. Although a T. rexpoo in itself is interesting (or perhaps disgusting, depending on your sensibilities), this fossil is also important. It’s full of chunks of bone, which tell us that T. rexcould bite so hard that it crushed the bones of its prey – a highly unusual way of eating with no obvious modern equivalent. The children had a lot of fun, even if there was a lot of talk about poo around the table! They enjoyed creating all kinds of different shapes and it reminded us all how much they loved playing with playdough too.

Just like modern day animals, some prehistoric animals ingested stones for ballast or digestive purposes. These are known as gastroliths which can also be found in coprolites. If present, they generally have a smooth surface. Looking Under A Microscope Coprolites are like time capsules and provide an unparalleled insight into the past. That’s because many coprolites contain inclusions, or tiny fossilized fragments of the food or material that the animal ate. Do Coprolites Smell? Since then many other types of fossils have been found inside coprolites including plants, pollen grains, insect remains and even microscopic animal burrows! How To Identify Coprolites While swinging around they pass the Romans, Egyptians and Greeks before the swing breaks and they end up in the Jurassic Period where they meet 3 little dino babies.

Other dinosaur coprolites have been found with plants inside, and one even contains decomposing wood – a sign that the dinosaur was supplementing its nutrition with fungi and bugs that feed on rotting logs. However, some lungfish and shark species have very unique spiral-shaped valves in their intestines. 🦈 George is holding a coprolite from South Carolina, USA. It has perfect top and bottom bite marks from some type of prehistoric critter – probably a fish.