Melody Elementary School
Chicago, Illinois
Ken Richings, 6th Grade

About Melody School

Melody School strives to create safe and stimulating environment for our students, with much support from family and community. Our school's mission is to provide a quality educational environment where the unique gifts and talents of all of our students are acknowledged, affirmed, and developed. We are committed to creating life-long readers, through effective reading instruction, who will be able to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.

About The Class

Our two sixth grade classrooms are taking part in Dr. Paul Sereno's dinosaur expedition to Niger, and we are excited to find out what discoveries there might be this year.

Student Questions:

1. Which was the last dinosaur alive? Why was it the last one?
   
   GRAY: They are in the air all around you! Birds are actually a group of dinosaurs that branched off quite early in dinosaur history. They are still alive and doing quite well!
   
   
2. How can you tell the age of a dinosaur?
   
   MILLER: Dating a dinosaur is tricky because you can’t date the actual dinosaur bones. Instead, you must date the rocks that are
   around them. There are two main kinds of rocks that we deal with. One kind is volcanic and the other is sedimentary (rocks left over by rivers and lakes). It is only possible to date the volcanic rocks, which is unfortunate because all dinosaurs are found in sedimentary rocks. However, if there are two sets of volcanic rocks surrounding the sedimentary rocks we find fossils in, we know that the age is between the ages of the volcanic rocks. That is one way that we do it!
   
   
3. How could all the dinosaurs survive in the winter?
   
   MILLER: Actually, a lot of dinosaurs didn’t have to deal with winters because they existed in more tropical climates. We can only speculate how any did, but if they were warm blooded as some of us suspect, then they would have been able to keep themselves warm much as birds and mammals do today.
   
4. Why were some dinosaurs meat-eaters and some plant-eaters?
   
   SERENO: Most were either one or the other. It is not common to find animals, like ourselves, that can eat both animals and plants. There might have been a few small dinosaurs that could have eaten both, but they would have been very rare.
   
   
5. Parent Question:
   How can somebody become a dinosaur-bones explorer?
   
   GRAY: The best thing you can do to become a dinosaur hunter is be interested in dinosaurs! It also helps to learn a lot about geology and biology, but if you really love dinosaurs, you are half way there!