Where did all the dinosaurs go?
A plain-English answer for grown-ups of kids aged 6–9, taken from the Yufena lesson that explores this question.
This is a members' lesson. Four other lessons are free to try.
The answer, for parents
Short answer: A giant asteroid blocked the sunlight, plants died and the food chain broke. Birds are dinosaurs too!
About 66 million years ago, a huge asteroid hit the Earth. It landed near what is now Mexico. It made a giant hole called a crater. The crash threw dust and smoke high into the sky. It blocked the sunlight for a long time. The Earth got dark and cold.
Plants need sunlight to grow. When the plants died, plant-eaters had no food. Then meat-eaters had no food too. The food chain broke. Not every animal died. Small animals could hide and find seeds, insects or dead food. Many big kinds became extinct. That means none are left alive. But birds are dinosaurs too!
In the lesson, your child puts this cause-and-effect chain in order: A giant asteroid hits Earth → Dust blocks the sunlight → It gets dark and cold → Plants stop growing → Plant-eaters run out of food → Meat-eaters run out of food too.
What if the asteroid had missed? Nobody knows for sure. Life on Earth might look very different today. Scientists like to ask big questions like this.
Where can we see real dinosaur fossils? In museums. The Natural History Museum in Singapore has three giant skeletons. They are made from real fossil bones.
Try it with your child
Let's play a food chain game. Make four cards: sun, plant, plant-eater and meat-eater. Put them in a row. Each one needs the one before it. Now take away the plant card. What happens to the plant-eater? And the meat-eater? Everything wobbles when one link goes.
Explore it together in the full lesson
Guess, find clues, build the chain and try the experiment. Read it together.