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Dinosaurs

Happy Hadrosaurs!

Happy Hadrosaurs!
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 3 to 5
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   4.04

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    corpse, dental, duck-billed, foghorn, grapefruit-sized, hadrosaur, hadrosaurs, knobbly, snorkel, bony, successful, handy, floss, good-looking, interesting, knob
     content words:    North America, Worst Crest Award, Best Crest Award

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Happy Hadrosaurs!
By Colleen Messina 		  
1     Hadrosaurs may have been happy dinosaurs. Why? Well, they had a big, successful family. They may have been a good-looking, noisy bunch! Besides that, they could chew their food. Other dinosaurs could not do that.
 
2     Hadrosaurs lived in the late Cretaceous age. That was about 76 million years ago. Scientists also call them duck-billed dinosaurs because of their flat snouts. They ate plants. They lived all over the world, from Asia to North America to Europe.
 
3     Their most useful feature may have been their teeth. Their teeth had interlocking rows. Because of this, hadrosaurs could chew their food. One member of the family had up to 1,000 teeth. When their old teeth wore out, hadrosaurs got new ones. So hadrosaurs wouldn't have needed a dentist. It is a good thing that they didn't use dental floss, either. Hadrosaurs also had strong cheek muscles. All those teeth and muscles were handy. Hadrosaurs ate leaves, branches, and seeds that needed to be chewed...a lot!
 
4     Hadrosaurs may have also been handsome. They had hollow crests on their heads. These crests came in different shapes. One hadrosaur looked like a unicorn. It had a single horn. The horn stuck out from between its eyes. Another hadrosaur had a beautiful, round crest. that looked like an elegant hat. A third member of the family may not have looked so handsome because it had a bony lump on its nose like a big wart. It may have won the Worst Crest Award.
 
5     The hadrosaur who would win the Best Crest Award was the Parasaurolophus. It was about 40 feet long and weighed about 2 tons. Its crest was up to six feet long. It swept back from the dinosaur's head. A bony knob was at the end. This dinosaur may have looked like it was wearing a snorkel!

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