In cold blood… links
Before the dinosaurs, the great reptiles walked the earth. Having hopped, crawled, and slithered away from their sea-swimming ancestors, they even developed the ability to live a completely terrestrial lifestyle.
They live in every corner of the world, having adapted to their environments hundreds of thousands, of thousands of years ago. While the crocodiles of today look similar to the prehistoric crocodiles, they have actually evolved wider jaws, sharper snouts, bigger scaly armour, and softer skin, all in response to the changing world they lived through over the last 250 million years.
Credit: Daily Mail UK - Crocodile Death Roll Used to Hunt Dinosaurs, 80 Million Years Ago
I admit it, I LOVE crocodiles.
Click the image above to find the article, and I bet you will too. And by the end of this month, the kids definitely will 🙂
Of course, Gecko the daycare gecko is a relative, but for the modern child (and teacher) close-up inspections of our reptilian subjects happen through the magic of Youtube.
In our first class:
we toured Tom Aspasie’s Reptile Room to visit with his collection of geckos, lizards, snakes, and (non-reptile) frogs, and giant Argentinian Tegu
we learned that geckos can scream and that a mated pair can fight off a snake
Do geckos fall in love? The kids decided that this pair had very strong feelings for each other. 🙂
So if your kids are talking about a gecko that fought a snake, now you know what it means.
Our second class was our fieldtrip to UBC Pacific Museum of Earth to visit reptile relative George the Lambeosaurus skeleton:
Credit: UBC Pacific Museum of Earth - George the Lambeosaurus
There was a tornado machine, a weather forecast prompter, and rocks of every shape, size, and colour.
Walking across the UBC campus was more than half the fun!
