Another delayed post… but interesting all the same. I hope they are helpful to someone and of nothing else, a wonderful record of times when the kids and I had fun learning about something new and just a bit unique.

While 2014 has not had us digging deep into the dinosaur world like we have, we did find the time to learn all about this Australian herbivore. The Minmi is named after a water body in Australia and is one of the most complete sets of fossils. Things like stomach content, skin texture and all sorts of fine details are saved in the fossils. It is believed that this dinosaur was often washed to sea and preserved as it was definitely a 4 legged land mammal.

Emanuel found this dinosaur most interesting due to its many armored plates and its obvious herbivore nature. We had a great discussion about where Australia is and how this was NOT a large armored dinosaur. Now we did have a rather interesting video by La Trobe University. Australian Dinosaur – Minmi.

And the links were actually plentiful on this dinosaur:

• EnchantedLearning HERE
• Australian Museum HERE
• Age of Dinosaurs HERE
• Find the Best has a great picture HERE
• Dinosaur of the Week HERE
• KidsDinos.com HERE
• The National Dinosaur Museum has a lengthy article HERE
• Wiki has their article HERE
• We got our picture off of deviantArt by hyphenatedsuperhero HERE
• We FOUND this dinosaur in a library book – The Big Book of Dinosaurs by DK.

Sorry no picture with this ancient dino post. BUT as I did last year, this year is the year to catch up. So posting the dinosaurs it is. Enjoy this Australian dinosaur post. I promise December VERY soon!

What a name – Diamantinasaurus Matildae, known more commonly in Australia as Matilda. This Cretaceous period sauropod is still mostly unknown. Only portions of its skeleton have been recovered to date. It is possibly the biggest sauropod in Australia. In comparison to the other large Titanosaurs, Matilda is actually on the small side. It is considered to be stocky and round with an almost bow legged appearance.

We had one video from LatrobeUniAustralia called Australian Dinosaur – Diamantinasaurus.

The link list is relatively short but definitely interesting…

• Australian Age of Dinosaurs HERE
• Australian Museum HERE
• Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
• Prehistoric Wildlife HERE
• Dinopedia HERE
• Wiki HERE
• There is a rather fanciful picture HERE that I have to share just due to its beauty by Sauropod Vertebrae Picture of the Week
• And our colouring page… from the Disillusioned Taxonomist HERE

In my research about Texas I came across a great book that had a story about the life of dinosaurs in Texas. So of course we had to research some of the listed ones. We did this a little differently than Emanuel and I usually do it when we solo learn. Instead I read them the information and one of the twins wrote the main points. The other and Emanuel then coloured our picture. These are all going to go into our Texas binder when we finish our unit in the end of May. Our original source of our list was from the book Dinosaur Hunt by Karen Carr. You can get to our resource page HERE.

Our first dinosaur was the slower moving carnivore from the Cretaceous period the Acrocanthosaurus also known as Acro. This therapod was found in Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona. Potentially one of the smarter predators it went after slower moving dinosaurs mainly. Its front legs/arms were longer than a T-Rex’s and much more useful. Definitely a dinosaur to watch out for. For our links we used some old favourites and some new ones as well…

• Jurassic Park Wikia HERE
• EnchantedLearning HERE
• Dinosaurs.About.com HERE
• KidsDinos.com HERE
• Age of Dinosaurs HERE
• NaturalSciences.org has a great resource that we did not get to using for an activity guide. A little more in depth  than we wanted to go with a light overview with multiple dinosaurs. HERE
• National Geographic Kids book page HERE
• Wikipedia HERE
• Our colouring page is from Education.com HERE

Dinosaur #2 was the Pleurocelus… a 4 legged herbivore also from the Cretaceous period. Found in Texas, Maryland and Utah it had longer front legs than back and so mimics the appearance of a giraffe. In fact, it is believed it may have walked on its front toes! It was a fitting meal for our Acrocanthosaurus. Of course we have links to share.

• Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
• DinoDictionary HERE
• EnchantedLearning (mid page) HERE
• Texas Parks and Wildlife HERE. They also had our colouring page HERE.
• Wikipedia has a discussion about the actual name determination and defining  that we did NOT cover but you can read more about that under the article titled Astrodon HERE

Our third dinosaur was one that Emanuel and I had already covered – the Hypsilophodon. So we did a brief overview and jumped list on our backlogged dino posts to put up the one we covered you can read about that HERE. This plant eater was included in our dinosaurs of Texas book but I do admit to finding it placed mostly in Europe.

Our fourth and final dinosaur was the Coloborhynchus. This dinosaur was a flyer and amazingly enough has given us a NEW term for what it eats – a PISCIVORE… fish eater! Emanuel is PUMPED! A new term to hunt under. There is some rather contradictory information about it as apparently there is some dispute as to whether it is its own dinosaur or falls under another name. We did enjoy our rather limited information and of course seeing it in our dinosaur book. Our links…

• Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
• Prehistoric Wildlife.com HERE
• Science Direct HERE
• Wiki HERE and HERE
• Many and varied images on my Google search HERE
• Our colouring page thanks to deviantArt titled Coloborhynchus Attack by HondariNundu HERE.