For question a) students used their observation skills well, and most provided more than one piece of evidence for each dinosaur. There was evidence that they had processed the information in the chart, rather than using it as a list to tick off, for example:

• Many students used their own words rather than the exact words in the chart;
• Few identified the legs of the allosaurus as slim, or referred to the teeth of the antarctosaurus (which cannot be seen in the picture).

A few students thought that the stegosaurus was a meat-eater because it had spikes on its tail to kill its prey. Only students who used one piece of evidence gave this answer.
For question b) i) some students focused on behaviour rather than a structural feature, for example, The dinosaur should look behind it before it eats to make sure there is nothing there.
Refer to Next steps.

For question b) ii) some students gave incomplete answers, for example:

• Because it's a carnivore
• Because it's a meat eating dinosaur

Although their reasoning has not been elaborated, students may have been implying, because it was a carnivore, it didn't graze and was therefore not so vulnerable, or because it was a meat eater it would not have predators. Refer to Next steps.

Common misconceptions

• Carnivores are not eaten by other animals. An examination of many known food chains demonstrates that some carnivores are eaten by others, for example, dogs may eat penguins.
• A misconception documented in science education research is that students often think that carnivores are big and ferocious, and herbivores are small and timid. In our trialling of this resource, we did not identify any evidence of this. Dinosaurs may be an interesting context to explore this idea. The velociraptor is an example of a small meat-eating dinosaur.
• Before the national trial, this resource was piloted with 8 Year 5 and Year 6 students from diverse backgrounds in a low decile school. Although students had studied endangered species and mammals earlier in the year, this resource did not form part of their usual programme. Results of this pilot showed that their responses generally followed the same pattern as the responses from the trial. However, discussion uncovered an interesting idea in relation to the statements about carnivores having slim stomachs and the herbivores having big round stomachs. The students could not understand why the dinosaurs that had a "healthy diet" (plants) were fat and those that ate food with high fat content were slim.

This is a good example of students attempting to transfer learning to a new context, but having some important pieces of knowledge missing, such as:

• Animals in the wild use up a large amount of energy just to get their food. Most humans no longer have to hunt for their food. If they did, they would be less likely to eat more food than they need.
• Plants don’t provide as much energy as meat, so herbivores have to spend a lot of their time eating.
• Big herbivores (an elephant is an example) need to eat a huge amount to satisfy their energy requirements, so need adaptations that allow them to do this. They are big rather than fat.
• Animals that eat meat (for example, tigers) do not need to eat as often.