Educational Dinosaur Toys, a Study of Real Dinosaurs

Educational Dinosaur Toys, a Study of Real Dinosaurs

Some toys exist for the sole purpose of being fun to play with while other toys are educational in nature. However, something truly magical happens when a toy is both fun and educational at the same time. Suddenly, the desire to play with a toy is also a drive to learn something, and that is a win in our book. Here at Safari LTD, we strive to create toys that fall into both the fun to play with and educational categories. Take our educational dinosaur toys for instance, while we have a wide variety of dinosaurs to choose from to keep all of your little dinosaur enthusiasts entertained we also use the most recent scientific information to create them. You just might be surprised to know how much our educational dinosaur toys can teach you about the real dinosaurs who once roamed the earth.

Learning from Dinosaur Toys:

What Did T-Rex Look Like?

Close your eyes for a minute and picture the mighty king of the dinosaurs, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Go ahead, no one’s watching! We’d be willing to bet that you probably saw something like this:

Yep, this is your typical T-Rex, big teeth, little bitty arms, and scaly skin. Now, hold onto your hats ladies and gentlemen because what if we told you that this might not be the most accurate depiction of a T-Rex. In fact, there has been quite a bit of discussion lately as to whether or not T-Rex may have been covered in feathers. Yes, feathers! Like a bird. Can you believe it! If this is indeed the case, then the mighty T-Rex would probably have looked something more like this:   

Now, while still definitely fierce looking, this does paint a different picture of what this dinosaur may have looked like. We may never honestly know precisely what Tyrannosaurus Rex looked like, but it is fun to see him differently, and we at Safari LTD are excited to help dinosaur lovers, young and old alike see all of his possibilities through our dinosaur figurines.

How Did the Dinosaurs Walk?

Another aspect that educational dinosaur toys can help children understand is how the dinosaurs walked and carried themselves. With those huge tails, it may seem like the best way for them to get around would be to stand up straight and drag their tail behind them on the ground. However, current research indicates that they actually walked holding their bodies and tails horizontal to the ground, like this:

Paleontology: The Study of Fossils

If you have a budding paleontologist on your hands, they might find the dinosaur fossils and bones more interesting than the dinosaur figures. Ultimately, the fossils are where all of the information that we know about dinosaurs came from in the first place. Scientists use fossilized bones to build replicas of what dinosaurs may have looked like. One of the more important parts of a dinosaur skeleton is the skull. The skull of a dinosaur, specifically the teeth can tell scientists if a dinosaur was a plant or a meat eater, and if they ate plants, what kind soft or tough.

Additionally, the skull gives clues to the size of the dinosaur’s brain, if it had good or bad eyesight, and how it’s sense of hearing and smell may have functioned. A fun game that we like to suggest to those interested in the bones is to play a matching game using the Dinosaur Skulls TOOB and their matching Prehistoric world figure. Can figure out which skull belongs to which dinosaur?

Animals and Their Prehistoric Relatives

Not only can you learn facts about the dinosaurs themselves from our detail-oriented dinosaur toys but you can also learn about modern-day animals using figures of their ancestors from our Prehistoric world dinosaur collection. For example, hailing from the Late Triassic period, the Postosuchus is a prehistoric relative of the crocodile. While the Postosuchus looks a little more like a dinosaur because of its stance, there are distinct similarities between it and the modern crocodile.

Another modern animal with a Prehistoric relative is the elephant. Now you may be thinking we are talking about the Woolly Mammoth, and you are correct that the Woolly Mammoth is an ancestor of the modern elephant, but have you ever heard of an Amebelodon?

In fact, the earliest relatives of the elephant are very diverse; the Amebelodon is just one of many falling into this group called proboscideans. As you can see here, the Amebelodon definitely shares some of its characteristics with the elephants we know and love today.

Safari LTD and Educational Dinosaur Toys

We hope that we have given you some ideas regarding how you can use our educational dinosaur toys to learn more about these fascinating creatures. Check out all of our collections to see the many different dinosaurs that we carry and start learning today.