The Dog Who Dug For Dinosaurs
Ready-To-Read Level Three
by Shirley Raye Redmond
Illustrations Simon Sullivan
Simon Spotlight
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
2024
Text and illustrations copyright 2004
32 pages
ISBN: 9781665963329
Even the most reluctant reader will want to read about a real life dog who loved to dig for fossils. One day, Mary Ann and her dog Tray discover giant bones on the cliff. They run and find grown ups to help them. The town is surprised to find the largest bones anyone has ever seen. A wealthy man offers to buy the bones and give them to the British Museum in London. The “monster” discovered by Tray was an ichthyosaur, or fish lizard.
Soon people were flocking to Lyme Regis to see where the bones were found. Scientists were deeply interested in the find and an Oxford scientist, William Buckland, visits and asks Mary Ann to show him where Tray discovered the bones. Tray comes through again. He sniffs out the bones of a plesiosaur and later a pterodactyl–a fossil never seen in England before. The little dog that dug for dinosaurs became famous and people visited Mary Ann’s village to buy fossils and search the cliffs.
The bones and fossils discovered by Tray and Mary Ann are on exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London today.
Highly recommended for readers who like non-fiction and dinosaurs, but Tray is charmingly captivating and will keep any reader entertained as they learn about fossils, dinosaurs and discovery.
Grades 3 and up. Level Three books feature more character development, more difficult vocabulary, longer sentences and more complex sentence structure.
