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Worksheets and No Prep Teaching Resources
Reading Comprehension Worksheets
Dinosaurs
Dinosaur Timeline

Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs


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


Dinosaur Timeline
By Sharon Fabian
  

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


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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