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Beginning with the first fossils found in 1795 we follow the story of dinosaurs, from unknown or mythical creatures to their recognition in 1842 as a new family called "dinosaurs". We then go back approximately 230 million years to the Eoraptor, one of the earliest dinosaurs found to date in southern Argentina, and show the students a replica skull. The students are often amazed by the relatively small size of the earliest dinosaurs and continue their venture as we progress through most of the familiar names, illustrating our talk with fossils along the way. We progress through their spread across the planet to colonize every corner of the globe. Some of the key species are illustrated with fossils or replicas. We conclude our dinosaur discovery with some of the last species to appear, such as triceratops and hadrosaurs. Of course no talk about dinosaurs would be complete without mentioning the T-Rex, which has a series of slides devoted to the information we have about their growth and lifestyle. Finally we conclude with a discussion about some of the extinction theories for the dinosaurs and causes for extinction of species today and even the discuss the possibility of our own extinction today!
During the presentation, we take an enquiry based approach and students are asked to speculate on the function of various dinosaur features (teeth, protective armour, body structure etc.). You will be amazed at how much your students already know about dinosaurs and to see how keen they are to get involved in the questions and answers. We have a number of scale dinosaur models that help to illustrate the comparative sizes of some of the dinosaurs and try to help the students to use their imagination in judging the sizes in comparison to themselves. I often have them imagine myself in some of the dinosaur pictures during the presentation and describe where I would be in comparison to each one, eg "if I was standing next to the triceratops, I would come up to his knee", "if I stood next to the stegosaurus, I would come up to just under his chin", "if the spinosaurus was in the room with us now, his jaw would be about here, and his the spines on his back would slice through the ceiling of this room". The expressions on the faces of students, especially the younger ones, are amazing! | 
