Caroline Slocum. age 9. Scottsville. N."Y..

 How much did the dinosaurs weigh?

It is no easy job to weigh a dinosaur. We cannot just ask a living dinosaur to step upon the scales. For there are no living dinosaurs. The last of them perished from the earth some 60 million years ago. We know about them from the bones they left buried in the earth. The flesh from these fossil bones has long since decayed and rotted away. However. the experts have been able to estimate the weight of the ancient dinosaurs. Even the very big ones.

The Age of Reptiles lasted for 150 million years. During that long time there were countless different kinds of dinosaur. For they changed through the ages. Some died out and different ones developed.' All that time. most of the animals in the world were reptiles. stranger than any on earth today. There were bird reptiles. fish reptiles and land reptiles. Some were plant eaters who fed on the lush greenery of those far ‑ off days. Some were meat eaters who fed upon the flesh of other reptiles.

The dinosaurs grew to be the royalty of the reptiles. In the beginning. they were smallish fellows. Some scampered over what is now Connecticut. They looked very much like featherless ostriches. These measured no more than two and a half feet tall. We can guess they weighed only a few pounds. As time went on, the children of the dinosaurs became bigger with each generation. Finally they grew into the biggest land animals that have ever walked on earth. '

One of these really big fellows has since been named brontosaurus. He lived where ever there were marshes and shallows waters. He was a plant eater and tore up the water weeds with his clawed front feet. For all his size. he was probably a harmless creature. Though he might have trampled smaller animals with his clumsy. feet.

The huge body of this monster was propped up on four legs as strong as pillars. He had a long and powerful tail. His long. snaky neck ended in a very. very small head. Plenty of the bones of brontosaurus have been  found. Some have been fitted together to form skeletons of the ancient' monsters. But it needs imagination and knowledge to clothe those skeletons in flesh and skin. This is what makes an estimation of the animals weight so hard. Brontosaurus. we are told. may have weighed about 37 tons.

This monster measured 75 feet from his nose over the hump of his back to the tip of his tail. You would think he could cope with anything. Not at all. For brontosaurus perished from the earth long before the Age of Reptiles came to an end. He was followed by dinosaurs almost as big. Some may have weighed as much or more. Many of these strange looking beasts roamed all over North America.

We may guess then. that the largest of the dinosaurs weighed between 30 and 40 tons. The smallest of them may have tipped the scales at pounds and ounces. The number of different dinosaurs that once lived are beyond counting. There must have been dinosaurs of every different weight and size between the two extremes.