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American Museum of Natural History

Grouping Dinosaurs

grouping-dinosaurs

Dinosaurs all belong to the same group, but within that group there are many subsets—meat-eating dinosaurs, four-legged dinosaurs, and so on. Try your hand at classification with these eight dinosaur illustrations.



Grouping Dinosaurs



  • More About This Resource...

    • In this classroom activity, created to complement the Museum's Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries exhibit, young students are introduced to sets and subsets.

      • The activity opens with background information for teachers about cladistics.
      • After brainstorming different ways to group the class itself, students work in small groups to identify subsets of coins.
      • The groups then complete a worksheet that challenges them to group dinosaurs into sets and subsets and share their results with the class.

    • Completion Time

      Approximately 1 period

    • Topic

      Paleontology

    • Subtopic

      Cladistics

    • Subtopic

      National Science Education Standards
      Grades K-4:

      • Science as Inquiry CONTENT STANDARD A:• Life Science CONTENT STANDARD C:• History and Nature of Science CONTENT STANDARD G:

    • Learning Standard

      National Science Education Standards
      Grades K-4:

      • Science as Inquiry CONTENT STANDARD A:• Life Science CONTENT STANDARD C:• History and Nature of Science CONTENT STANDARD G: