Apologia Science-Primeval Reptiles

We completed our Chapter 5 Research Journal page in class.

We spent one week on Primeval Reptiles and had so much fun!  It was very interesting to learn about the discoveries of these great creatures God created long ago and that we are unable to see with our own eyes today.  This is where science comes in...even though we don't know much about them, we can make educated "guesses" on what we think they may have looked like based on evidence found from their fossils!  Fascinating!

We learn much from the Bible on these as well!  The Leviathan, for instance, is mentioned in the Old Testament a few times so we also read up on that.  God's Word is filled with so much science!  (check out Job 41 & Psalm 104)  The GREAT DELUGE was a big part of our lesson to explain why these reptile's fossils have been found in weird locations like the desert and on top of mountains.  Apologia does an incredible job explaining this for the kids to understand and they were filled with complete enthusiasm on this topic.
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Here is our "match up" game...mine is the answer key so this one is not cut up but this is what the kids would look like if they matched them properly.

We talked about the 4 main "saurs":
Nothosaurs-"spurious lizard"

• Means "Spurious Lizard"
• Long neck & tail with 4 webbed feet
• They can walk on land and swim
• Eggs hatch on land (like a turtle)
• The Lariosaurus is one type-these were thought to be around 2 ft. long.
• They can range in size from 2 ft up to 20 ft.

 Plesiosaurs

• Long necks and turtle shaped body with no shell
• Probably ovovivaparous
• They had 4 flippers and up to 24 different bones in each finger!
• The Elasmosaurus and Pliosaurs were a type of Plesiosaur.

Mosasaurs

• These resemble sea snakes: tiny flippers and paddle shaped tails
• They can range from 10 ft. up to 50 ft. long
• Swallow prey whole (unhinged jaw)

Ichthyosaurs

• Means "Fish Lizard"
• Looks like a large fish but with a lizard skeleton
• Shonisaurs were a type of Ichthyosaur

We ended our lesson by talking about what "articulated" means and how sediment can help preserve some fossils!  The students each took a ball of Crayola Air Dry Clay and also one of the small sea creatures.  We found that the lobster, sea horse, crab and the swordfish made AWESOME imprints.  We also used plastic dinosaurs to make footprints and seashells for our fossils.  We let them dry for the week and then attached these wooden tag keychains to each one (don't forget to make holes in the clay BEFORE it air dries though).  

To finish them off, we printed these clear labels for each keychain!  
​The kids LOVE these and they were fun to make.

Here are some of the products we used for this project!  We already had the plastic sea creatures from back when we made the ocean zone bottles! Click here to go to the Ocean Zone Bottle Youtube video!
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