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Activity 3: Do at School!
Dinosaur or Mammal?
Often when people visit PRI they see mastodon bones on display and say "look at the dinosaur bones!"
Is a mastodon a dinosaur or a mammal? How would you tell apart a dinosaur and a mammal?
These pictures are of mammals and dinosaurs that have lived at different times over the last 100 million years. Circle all of the mammals that you can find.
What characteristics do all the animals that you circled have in common?
Do you think all of these animals live during the same time period?
Clue: Look at the time line on the last page of this booklet.
![[Dinosaurs and mammals-click to see the image alone]](../ice4.gif)
Did you get them all right? Check the answers.
Main Message: Organisms are classified according to their characteristics rather than size or age. Not all fossil creatures, or all large creatures, are dinosaurs.
Connections: In activity 5, "Extinction", students examine different mammals and determine which are extinct and what characteristics these extinct animals may have in common.
The
Paleontological Research Institution