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Dinosaur Timeline Dinosaurs

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Dinosaur Timeline
Print Dinosaur Timeline Reading Comprehension


Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 8 to 12
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	8.91

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		best, meteor, beginning, jellyfish, trilobites, plant-eating, mammoth, woolly, mass, continent, giant, lasted, extinction, died, nearly, shallow
	content words:		Paleozoic Era, Mesozoic Era, Cenozoic Era, Triassic Period, Jurassic Period, Cretaceous Period, Ice Age

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Dinosaur Timeline By Sharon Fabian

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¹     The prehistoric times on Earth go back even farther than the dinosaurs and lasted for millions of years. This stretch of millions of years is usually divided into three big sections called eras. First there was the Paleozoic Era, then the Mesozoic Era, and then the Cenozoic Era. We call most of this time prehistoric because it happened before there was any written or recorded history. Most of what we know about these early times comes from fossils.
 
²     The Paleozoic Era lasted from about 541 million years ago to about 252 million years ago. This era was hundreds of millions of years! During this long stretch of time the Earth went through lots of changes. The landmasses that we call continents drifted and changed places. At the end of the Paleozoic Era the continents were probably all attached in one giant land mass that has been named Pangaea. Shallow seas probably covered most of the Earth. There was life on Earth during this era, but no dinosaurs yet. First would have come the tiny life forms such as bacteria. Invertebrates such as sponges, trilobites, jellyfish, and worms probably developed early on. Then came early vertebrates, maybe starting with little fish. Still no dinosaurs.
 
³     The era from about 252 million years ago to about 65 million years ago is called the Mesozoic Era. At the beginning of this era, the Earth still had just one giant continent, Pangaea, but by the end the land had drifted apart until the continents were separate and almost like they are today. The Mesozoic Era is called the Age of Reptiles, and that includes DINOSAURS! During the almost 200 million years of the Mesozoic Era, many, many kinds of dinosaurs lived on Earth from little ones about the size of a chicken to the giant of giants, the 100-plus foot long Argentinosaurus. At the end of the Mesozoic Era, nearly all of the dinosaurs died out in a huge extinction. No one is sure how it happened. The best guess is that a giant meteor hit the Earth.

Paragraphs 4 to 8:
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Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs

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Science

Science

Careers in Science         Caring for Earth         Clouds         Dinosaurs         Earth's Land         Earth         Earthquakes         Electricity         Energy         Erosion         Food Pyramid         Food Webs and Food Chain         Forces and Motion         Fossils         Health and Nutrition         How Things Work         Landforms         Life Science         Light         Magnets         Matter

Moon         Natural Disasters         Photosynthesis         Plant and Animal Cells         Plants         Rocks and Minerals         Science Process Skills         Scientific Notation         Seasons         Simple Machines         Soil         Solar System         Sound         Space and Stars         Sun         Tsunami         Volcanoes         Water Cycle         Water         Weather

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