Explore Fossils! With 25 Great Projects

The Browns intersperse indoor and outdoor activities with information about fossils, dinosaur, and paleontology in this entry in the Explore Your World! series. One early experiment helps readers get a sense of geological time by taking a 10-minute walk: the first step correlates to the Earth’s formation, four billion years ago; step 460 stands for the present day, and humans pop up at step 459 1/2. Relevant vocabulary terms (radioactive decay, chloroplasts, theropods) appear and are defined throughout, and Stone’s cartoons feature a recurring pair of unnamed animal paleontologists (one is a pterosaur), as well as help illustrate the various experiments. Clear, straightforward writing helps introduce sometimes complex topics like radiometric dating, as well as how human understanding of dinosaurs has changed through research and discovery. Ages 7–10. (Jan.)