Ages 7 & up EI-5179 Guide Book VELOCIRAPTOR Ages 7 & up EI-5176 Ages 7 & up EI-5177 Ages 7 & up EI-5178 Dig ‘em up Dig ‘em up Dig ‘em up ‘em Assemble Assemble ‘em Assemble ‘em uel ‘em l ‘em Collect & d Collect & due Collect & duel ‘em nosaur ntai ns one d i one d inosaur Kit co Kit contai ns ne d inosaur Kit contai ns o TYRANNOSAURUS TRICERATOPS STEGOSAURUSSTEGOSAURUS EI-5176 EI-5177 EI-5178 For more digging fun, add these Dueling Dino Dig kits to your collection! ™ ISBN 1-56767-219-1 Table of Contents What Is in Dueling Dino Dig?. 2 Welcome to Velociraptor’s World . 4 Attack of a Velociraptor Pack . 5 Velociraptor Findings . 10 A Dinosaur Dig . 12 You’ll DIG These Fossils! . 14 Get Ready to Dig . 16 Dino Drawing . 18 Draw Your Own . 18 Velociraptor Fact Sheet . 20 Picture Gallery . 21 Making Your Velociraptor Models . 22 Displaying Your Velociraptors . 24 © Copyright 1997 Educational Insights Inc., Carson, CA (USA), St Albans, Herts. (UK) All rights reserved. Please retain this information. The Age of Dinosaurs . 26 Conforms to ASTM F-963-96a, EN-71. Printed in China. EI-5179 Where Did They Go? . 29 1 Paleontologist’s tools: What Is in Dueling Just like a paleontologist, you will get to dig the “fossils” from the “earth.” The digging tool Dino Dig? will help you break apart the clay, separate the fossils from the clay, and clean bits of clay from the fossils. The brush Dueling Dino Dig Guide Book—Velociraptor kit: will let you clean the dust from the fossils as you excavate. This Fossils: book contains an exciting story featuring Velociraptor, set in The fossils that you excavate will be smaller than the Cretaceous era. You will also find background information real ones, but when you put them together you’ll have two and history, plus instructions on how to excavate your fossils, true-to-scale Velociraptor skeletons. assemble them into models, and turn them into Dueling Dinos! Wax: Clay block: This wax will hold your fossil parts together. It will This block of clay represents a piece of earth — not harden and you can change poses or positions whenever millions of years old. Buried inside the clay, you will find you wish! The flexibility of this wax allows your dinosaurs fossil replicas of Velociraptor bones. to have a little bit of movement, especially in the jaw and legs. Then you can pose them alone or with models from other Dueling Dino Dig kits. (See back cover of this guide.) Guide Book Stand: When your Velociraptor models are complete, pose them on this stand. Then attach the label (included). Stand Wax Paleontologist’s tools: Fossil 2 Clay block 3 Welcome to ttack of a Velociraptor Pack Velociraptor’s World Five Velociraptors sleep under a fern-like tree. The time is Are you ready to find and study fossils, just like a paleontologist? the late Cretaceous period,* about 65 million years ago. Huddled in a pack for warmth, the Velociraptors sleep until Are you ready to dig some fossils of your own? the first rays of sun shine through the trees. Day is here. Are you ready to build a model of a dinosaur and pose Time to move! it in action? Then you are ready for Dueling Dino Dig! The air is dry. Desert winds start to blow, battering the rocks and causing sand to whip and swirl. Despite the stinging sand, the Velociraptors set off to hunt for food. Let’s go back in time more than 65 million years to the The Velociraptors run through the valley in search of prey. world of dinosaurs—the time of Velociraptor... Small mammals hide in the underbrush where the dinosaurs can’t see them. 4 5 *To find out more about the Cretaceous period and the age of dinosaurs, see page 26. As they approach a stream, the Velociraptors see an The mother Protoceratops turns her large head, keeping Avimimus. They stop to watch the two-legged, bird-like a watchful eye on the nest of eggs that she and another omnivore catch a lizard and gulp it down. Seeing the Protoceratops had both laid. Last night as the sun went chance to grab a tasty mouthful, they get ready to hunt down and the desert air became cold, the two mothers Avimimus, a rapid runner, before it can speed away. But covered the nest with sand. Like a blanket, sand protects all of a sudden, their attention turns to a 400-pound (180kg) the eggs from the cold night air. Protoceratops guarding a nest of eggs. Now, as the sun warms the air and sand, Protoceratops An Inviting Meal removes the top layer of sand. The sun will warm the eggs until they are ready to hatch. The other mother is away The Velociraptors are hungry enough to eat a 9-foot from the nest, looking for plants to eat. Soon she will return (2.7 meter) Protoceratops. As a pack, they could easily and take her turn protecting the nest. catch Protoceratops. She is bigger, but the Velociraptors The Velociraptors watch Protoceratops. She stands alone by have speed, agility, and razor-sharp teeth. And they are the nest. The Velociraptors raise their curved, grooved, and very hungry! horned claws, ready to attack! The Bloody Battle One Velociraptor jumps onto the back of the Protoceratops. Protoceratops’s bony frill protects her neck from his sharp bite. The Velociraptor then digs its long curved claws into her shoulder flesh. Protoceratops screams with pain. The other mother Protoceratops hears the cry and runs to help. With her beak, she grabs the hind leg of the clinging 6 7 Velociraptor. Crack—the leg breaks. The Velociraptor falls to Her big hard beak opens and clamps down on the ground in agony. Screams from both the Protoceratops Velociraptor’s neck. and the Velociraptor fill the air. The young Velociraptor is down! A small Velociraptor reaches under the wounded The strong desert wind suddenly increases. It becomes a Protoceratops and slashes her belly. All of the Velociraptors gale force. Sand blows everywhere. It swirls and twists join in the attack. Two Protoceratops are no match for these through the air, making it impossible to see! The surviving killing machines. The wounded Protoceratops sinks to the Protoceratops lumbers away to protect her nest. The ground, her life-blood spilling onto the sand, her cries Velociraptor with the broken hind leg crawls away from the becoming feebler. battle scene toward the water. The surviving Velociraptors A Storm Approaches also run for the water. There, they will find cover from the swirling, stinging sand. The wounded Velociraptor thrashes about. Its hind leg is useless. The remaining Protoceratops attacks a young The violent sand storm rages for days. Finally the wind dies Velociraptor. This Velociraptor makes a fatal mistake—it down. The wounded Protoceratops and the young tries to claw the Protoceratops’s eyes—and can’t get Velociraptor, unable to escape the storm, are buried in the through her bony skull. Protoceratops twists her head. sand. They are dead. The seasons change. Rain begins to fall. The little stream fills with flood waters and spills over its banks. Water, sand, silt, and dirt bury the dead Velociraptor and the Protoceratops—again. Over many, many years the bones turn into fossils. And then... 8 9 Velociraptor Findings All Velociraptor discoveries have been made in some part of Mongolia, China 1971 the Gobi Desert, beginning in the 1920s. The discovery of the larger Deinonychus in Montana in the 1960s helped In 1971, two paleontologists from Poland made an amazing scientists recognize the differences between Deinonychus dinosaur discovery in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. They and Velociraptor, the “fast thief.” uncovered the skeletons of a Velociraptor and a Protoceratops—locked in battle. The discovery gave us a close look at these two species of dinosaurs. The fossil Velociraptor discovery also told a story. One of Velociraptor’s upper claws was found inside the mouth of the Protoceratops. A clawed foot was positioned at the gut of the Protoceratops. These dinosaurs may have been smothered by a sandstorm, just like you read about in Attack of a Velociraptor Pack . Perhaps they both died at the same moment in the battle, and then they were buried in sand. No one knows for sure. Deinonychus Deinonychus was much larger than Velociraptor. Later discoveries in the Gobi Desert tell even more about the Velociraptor. In the 1990s, scientists found a Velociraptor skull with a hole in the top. The hole is the exact size and shape of a Velociraptor tooth! One Velociraptor was probably killed by the bite of another Velociraptor. The evidence tells us that Velociraptors may have fought with each other as well as with other dinosaurs. 10 11 5 A Dinosaur Dig The fossil is uncovered with a brush. It is protected with wrappings of plaster-soaked cloth or sprayed with a resin to Dinosaur digs require very hard work. It can take months, make it stronger. even years, and a lot of work to find a fossil and remove it 6 from the earth. It’s worth it, though, for the excitement of When the plaster hardens, it is safe to remove the fossil discovery and new scientific knowledge! from the ground. Sometimes a whole rock is excavated to protect a fragile fossil. Let’s take a look at what happens at many fossil digs: 7 1 After it is removed from the ground, each fossil is care- Fossil hunters search rock layers of the Mesozoic era fully placed in a padded crate.