Image of a T. Rex in the jungle
Illustrations by Owen Richardson

A Day as a Dino King

What was life like for a giant, meat-eating Tyrannosaurus rex? You're about to find out!

By Jess McKenna-Ratjen
From the February 2024 Issue

Learning Objective: Students will obtain information from two texts to summarize how T. rex lived and how its fossils were uncovered.

Lexile: 720L; 470L
Other Focus Areas: Earth's Materials & Systems, Measurement & Data

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GURGLE. GRUMBLE. GROWL.

Your empty stomach wakes you up. It’s a hot afternoon. The air feels thick and muggy, clinging to the scales and feathers along your back. You open your mouth, revealing 60 razor-sharp teetheach 6 inches long. Your eyes, each as big as a softball, slowly open. You look down at yourself and seeyou are a Tyrannosaurus rex!

At first all you see around you are plants. There are no roads or houses. There won’t be people to build them for another 66 million years! The tallest things are trees. The only sounds are the buzz of insects and the chirps of birds.

Your sharp eyes spot something moving in the shadows. It’s a tiny, ratlike mammal. It’s too small for your giant appetite. No, you need to eat a jumbo dinosaur for lunch.

You lift your nose and sniff. A deliciously sour scent floats through the air. A dinosaur is rotting a few miles away. Yum!

You get up to search for it. Your legs are powerful, with killer 8-inch claws at the tip of each toe. You need that strength and grip to lift your body up. At 40 feet long and 20,000 pounds, you’re roughly the size and weight of a school bus.

As you stand, be careful not to topple over. Your arms are only 3 feet long, tiny compared with the rest of your body. You can’t use them to balance. Luckily, you have your tail to help you stay steady on your feet.

BOOM! Your weight shakes the ground as you stalk into the forest.

Image of a Triceratops being chased by a T. Rex

Illustration by Owen Richardson

Triceratops was one of T. rex’s favorite foods—and a dangerous one to catch!

A Rotten Meal

It’s hard to eat enough to fuel a carnivore as big as you. It takes 200,000 calories a day. That’s more than 700 hamburger patties’ worth of meat!

So you follow the stench of rot. While you can hunt, you’re also a scavenger. You’ll eat dead dinosaurs whenever you can. After all, they can’t run away! Hopefully, other dinosaurs­—especially the few other T. rex in your area­—don’t get there first. A fight could be deadly.

Your nose leads you to the carcass, or dead body. It’s a young Edmontosaurus (ed-mahn-tuh-SAW-ruhs), only 10 feet long. That’s a fraction of your size! These herbivores, or plant eaters, have a thick, scaly body and a duck-like bill lined with hundreds of tiny teeth.

But you’re not alone. Birdlike dinosaurs called troodontids (troh-oh-DON-tids) are pecking at the remains. These scavengers have already scarfed down the best parts!

Annoyed, you snap at the small creatures. You’ll have to find something else to eat.

Prey Spotted

You hear a low-pitched rumbling from miles away

RUMBLE. RUMBLE. RUMBLE.

You move quickly toward the noise. Well, as quickly as you can! You lumber along at 3 miles per hour

Finally, you reach the source of the sound. A herd of Triceratops (try-SEHR-uh-tahps) graze in a field, each one 30 feet long and 10 feet tall. Three sharp horns poke from the top of their heads

You’ll have to be careful when hunting these creatures. One jab could be fatal.

GRUMBLE. GROWL! You’re hungry enough to risk it.

Triceratops Takedown

Your scales and feathers blend in perfectly with the trees. You hide in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike.

One of the Triceratops moves closer to you. It lingers as the herd starts to leave. Now is your chance!

With a great lunge, you crash into the Triceratops. Your jaws latch around its throat before it can jab you with its horns. You deliver a crushing bite with 5 tons of force.

A deep, proud growl leaves your throat. The rest of the Triceratops flee, but you don’t mind. You’ve got 13,000 pounds of food in front of you. You stomp on the chest of your prey, pinning it down so you can tear through its tough skin with your teeth. The meat inside is warm and filling. You’ll survive another day.

In fact, you’ll live a full 23 yearsnot bad for a T. rex! After you die, something rare and amazing will happen to your bones. Mineral-rich water will seep into them, turning them into stonelike fossils. One day, humans will race to uncover them in a place known as Montana.

But for now, you settle in to enjoy your hard-won lunch.

Welcome to the World of Dino Hunting

In the early 1900s, fossil hunters raced to find dinosaur remains to sell to museums. Step into their hot, dusty world . . .

By Jess McKenna-Ratjen

Illustration of scientists hunting for fossils in the hot heat of the day

Illustration by Owen Richardson

Welcome to Montana, Fossil Hunter!

The year is 1908. You look out across a vast desert. Huge rocks jut out of the ground, striped with reds and browns.

The layers of rock tell a story. You’re learning how to read them. The layers contain a record of the environment dating back millions of years! Each colorful layer of stone is younger than the one below it.

Since you were a child, you’ve been hooked on tales of giant reptiles called dinosaurs. Here in the deserts of the western U.S., people have been finding their huge, fossilized bones.

But you’re here on a very specific mission.

Six years ago, fossil hunter Barnum Brown uncovered bones from an animal with a fitting nameTyrannosaurus rex. It meanstyrant lizard king.” The teeth Brown found made one thing obviousit was a giant meat eater!

Today Brown is searching for a big missing piece: a complete T. rex skull! You’re part of the small team tasked with finding one and digging it up.

Hunting for Clues

Black & white photo of a dinosaur bone collector holding a long fossil

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images 

Barnum Brown is remembered as one of the world’s best dinosaur bone collectors. Brown found most of the bones on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Brown isn’t just any fossil hunter. It would take weeks for others to find what he can uncover in only a few days. Why? Brown knows how to follow the right clues.

Fossils are often buried beneath many layers of dirt and rock. Brown can read the layers of rock to tell how ancient rivers moved. He has a talent for spotting the light blue and green tints that could mean a flood once swept through, carrying mud and debris.

When Brown finds a promising spot, it’s time to dig. Sometimes he uses dynamite to blast rock away!

But today, Brown decides to use horses attached to a plow. They easily scrape away 20 feet of soft earth.

 Achoo! You pull your bandanna over your nose to filter out the dust.

Brown spots an area that looks smoother and shinier than the rock around it. Could it be the edge of a fossil?

What are Fossils?
Watch a video about fossils.

Digging for Bones

You chip away at the rock with a special hammer. It’s slow, exhausting work. Your arms ache. It’s July, and the temperature has climbed to 100 degrees.

But you keep going. Hours later, you start to see the shape of a bone. Could it be a jawbone? You switch to a digging knife to remove smaller bits of dirt and rock.

Something comes into view. A 4-foot-long jawbone. A sharp, knife-sized tooth. An eye socket the size of a softball.

You’ve uncovered a complete T. rex skull!

Protecting Your Prize

Brown shouts with joy. He rushes to coat the fossil in thick, white plaster. This mud-like substance will harden, keeping the bones safe on the train ride to the museum back east. It will be removed later.

As you move to help Brown, you can’t help staring at those massive teeth!

You used to imagine dinosaurs as giant, scaly cows, waddling peacefully through fields of ferns.

Now you realize just how dangerous life would have been millions of years ago, when death was one chomp away.

Dino Scientist
Watch a video about a scientist who studies dinosaurs.
video (2)
Video
Dino Scientist

Watch a video about a scientist who studies dinosaurs.

Dino Scientist

Watch a video about a scientist who studies dinosaurs.

Video
What are Fossils?

Watch a video about fossils.

What are Fossils?

Watch a video about fossils.

Slideshows (1)
Slideshow
Vocabulary Slideshow

<p>View this slideshow to explore the STEM vocabulary in &quot;A Day as a Dino King.&quot;</p>

Vocabulary Slideshow

View this slideshow to explore the STEM vocabulary in "A Day as a Dino King."

Activities (0) Download Answer Key
Quizzes (1)
Step-by-Step Lesson Plan

1. PREPARE TO READ (5 minutes)
Informally check students’ prior knowledge about Tyrannosaurus rex.

  • Tell students you’re going to read about a famous dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus rex or T. rex. Display the issue’s cover. Let students talk with a partner to share what they know about T. rex or things they can infer based on the illustration.
  • Reconvene and read the following statements, pausing after each. Allow students to stand if they believe a statement is true (But do not reveal the answers yet!): 1) T. rex weighed as much as a school bus (True); 2) T. rex typically walked about 3 miles per hour (True); 3) T. rex could bite with 5 tons, or 10,000 pounds, of force. (True)

2. READ AND EVALUATE (30 minutes)
Read and compare two second-person narratives about dinosaurs and their fossils.

  • Read aloud the first section ofA Day as a Dino Kingand discuss: Which details are scientific facts? (e.g., the size of T. rex teeth) Which are details included to engage the reader? (e.g., “a deliciously sour scent”) How do the two overlap? (The sensory details are based on what scientists know about these dinosaurs.)
  • Read aloud the circular prompt on page 11. Show students your hand and ask them to estimate its length: Is it longer or shorter than 6 inches? Then use a ruler to measure it. Discuss how close students’ estimates were.
  • Finish readingA Day as a Dino King.” Then ask: Which of the statements from earlier were true? Repeat the statements. (All of them!) Tell students that much of what scientists know about these creatures comes from fossils.
  • Play the video Dino Scientist.” Afterward, read aloud the article Welcome to the World of Dino Hunting” (pp 14-15). Ask: How was fossil hunting different in 1908 than it is today? How was it similar?
  • Preview the Quick Quiz. Have students complete the assessment in pairs and reconvene to discuss their responses.

3. RESPOND TO READING (10 minutes)
Summarize and evaluate one of the paired texts.

  • Share the Read and Review activity. Let students pick which of the paired texts they want to review and then have them complete the prompts. You can post their work, along with the two articles, on a class bulletin board.

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