Dinosaur Discoveries! | Caitie's Classroom Field Trip | Nature Museum for Kids

We are at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario. There's so much to see here, but let's go find the dinosaurs. Whoa, look at all the dinosaurs. They're so big. 85 million years ago, these giant dinosaurs were alive and walking all over the planet. And most of the bones that you see here are real dinosaur bones that have been found all over the earth. I think that's pretty amazing. Oh, Triceratops. Wow. See his horns? It's amazing just how big dinosaurs are. And look, a big tail. Wow. This is the head of a Parasaurolophus. It might have blown air all the way through the top of his head. And when it would come out, it might sound like this. That's how they would talk to each other. Hi, Parasaurolophus. He says hi. Ooh. Look, this dinosaur has feathers. It's called an Archaeopteryx, and it's one of the first birds that was ever discovered. Wow. I've never seen a bird like that. Look at this one. They have big horns on their head. But I wonder why do they have those holes there? Hi, Katie. Hi, everyone. This is Dr. Jordan Mallon. He's a paleontologist here at the museum. That means he studies dinosaur bones. So, Jordan, I guess, how come they have those holes there? Well, this is an animal called Styracosaurus, and it was a horned dinosaur. And all horned dinosaurs have these big frills on the back of their heads covered with spikes, and that would have been pretty heavy. So we think that these animals had holes in their frills in order to lighten the load. Oh, so their head's not as heavy to carry around. That's right. It makes a lot of sense, but it still looks really good. Absolutely. I think so. Yeah. Hey, I got something cool to show you. Do you want to come see it? Yeah, I'd love to see something cool. Let's check it out. So, Katie, I have something else I'd like to show you. I want to show you the difference here between a plant-eating and a meat-eating dinosaur. This is a jaw from something called a duck-billed dinosaur, and if I flip it around here, you can see that it's got hundreds of teeth growing up through here. Wow, there's so many. That's right, yeah. They grew up in these rows together, and if I spin this thing around, you can see sort of the business side of things. All these teeth form a big, flat grinding surface here for grinding up tough plants. So these are plant-eaters. Exactly, yep. Wow, they really do grind those teeth down. They do. In fact, that's why they have so many teeth, because as their teeth grind down on one side, there's always new ones coming up on the other side to replace them. A fresh new tooth. Absolutely. Okay, well, what about these teeth? Ah, so that's the jaw of a tyrannosaur. I think we've all heard of those guys before, and they have big, sharp, pointy teeth growing up here. So this must be a meat-eater. Exactly. These big, sharp, pointy teeth are used for cutting through meat. It is really sharp. And they're also replacing, although they don't have quite as many of these duck-billed dinosaurs. I guess they don't need them. Exactly, yep. So behind us here, we have an animal called Hypacrosaurus, and my question for you is, is this a plant-eater or is this a meat-eater? Okay, let's take a look. Well, I see the teeth are flat, like this one, so I'm going to say it's a plant-eater. Exactly, bingo. Hypacrosaurus was a plant-eater. In fact, it was an animal called the duck-billed dinosaur, just like this guy here. So we know from the flat teeth that these guys were eating plants. Where do you find all of these dinosaur bones? Well, we have to dig them up in the earth. In fact, we have a really cool activity here at the museum where you get to do just that. Would you like to see it? Yeah, I'd love to. Cool, let's check it out. Okay. So check this out, Katie. This is what we call a jacket, a plaster jacket containing the bones of a dinosaur. These are real dinosaur bones? They are. It's actually the foot of a duck-billed dinosaur called the hadrosaur. And so when we dig these things up, we bring them back to the museum here, and we work on them with tools like this to finish getting them out of the ground. Did you want to give that a shot, maybe? Yeah, that'd be lots of fun, I think. Okay, let's try it. So what you want to do is you want to scrape away the rock that's actually surrounding the bones. You have to be careful. I don't want to hurt the bone. Yes, it takes a long time. Sometimes maybe weeks or sometimes months, depending on how hard the rock is. Yeah. But eventually, you'll get the bones out of the rock, and you can assemble them. You can put them together to figure out what the dinosaur would have looked like. Ooh, and then we know how big it was. Yeah, we can study how big it was. We can study what it ate by its teeth, for example. And we can build a reconstruction of what we think the animal would have looked like in real life. And we actually have in our gallery at the other end here some dinosaur reconstructions, so you can see what they look like in life. Skin and muscles and everything? Exactly. Wow, I want to see that. Check it out, yeah. Okay, let's go see it, everyone. Thank you so much for showing me all this, Dr. Jordan. It was my pleasure. Thanks for coming. Bye, guys. Okay, let's go. Whoa. This is what dinosaurs would have looked like in real life. Remember, we saw this one? It had holes in the crest of its head, and Jordan said it was because it made the head lighter so they could lift it up. Hello? So this is what it looks like when the skin is covering it. It's really pretty. These must be meat eaters. They have sharp teeth. Wow. There's so much to learn about dinosaurs, and paleontologists like our friend Jordan are discovering new things every day. Maybe one day you'll discover a dinosaur, and it could be on display at a museum like the Canadian Museum of Nature. Woo.