Go back through time in your time machine to discover the oldest dinosaur. You can print off a colour version of the board game or a colouring in version to add your own funky colour. Cut it out carefully and stick together the edges so the pictures match up. Cut around the specimen cards and the time machine counters. You will need one dice to play the game. Up to four players.

To win you must collect all the samples, which means that you must land on the sample to pick it up. As you get near to the sample you have to decide to sit tight. If the number you throw is more than you need you can not move forward. Go past the sample without picking it up and you loose the game.

You will travel back in time 250 million years meeting animals and plants from pre-historic times.

Download the game:
Full colour PDF file;
Black and white PDF file.

Adobe Portable Document Files (PDF) require Adobe Reader software to open and read them. Download the latest version of Adobe Reader for your operating system. Instructions for download are given on the Adobe site.

Click on part of the board game to find out more information.

All the evidence for the events, aminals, plants and rock types you will meet along the journey through time comes from the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. Below is a bit more background information on each one and links to other web sites dealing with that topic.

Mary Anning back to the board game

Mary Anning was the most famous fossil colloctor of all time, she found fantastic fossils from the Jurassic Coast around Lyme Regis and Charmouth about 185 years ago. She found the first Ichthyosaur fossil with her brother in 1812 at the age of 11. They sold it for £24, a lot of money in those days. Mary Anning is an inspiration to us all, you too can find fossils. Why not visit the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre to find out how to find fossils.

Find out more about Mary Anning:
Lyme Regis Museum;
The Dinosaur Time machine.

The Ice Age back to the board game

The Ice Age lasted a long time, from about 2 million years ago and some people think it is still going on. Remember that during the Ice Age there were cold periods (Glacial) and warm periods (Inter glacial). It is thought that we are in an interglacial period now. Solid glaciers never came far enough south to cover the Jurassic Coast but they did come down as far as the North Devon Coast and Bristol Channel. In the cold periods the Jurassic Coast was very different, imagine frozen tundra like Northern Canada and Russia today. Teeth of a Woolly Mammoth have been found in river deposits along the coast. During warm periods animals which now are only found in Africa lived here, bones of hippopotamus and lions have been found in Britain. The most profound effect that the Ice age had on the Jurassic Coast was to lower and raise sea levels. During cold spells the sea level was very much lower and during warm spells even higher. After the last cold spell Chesil beach was formed as the sea level rose.

Find out more about Ice Age Britain:
Ice Age mammals;
Ice Age map;
Kent's Cavern;
BBC Weather, Climate Change.

Continental drift or more correctly Plate Tectonics back to the board game

Geologists have proved that the surface of the earth is moving. Like a giant cracked egg shell the surface is made up of crustal plates which move very slowly. Riding upon the plates are the continents and so through millions of years of geological time the continents move around. Look at an atlas and see how South America and Africa look like they once fitted together. In fact this was so about 225 million years ago. This explains why the rocks along the Jurassic Coast vary from place to place. The rocks of East Devon formed 15 degrees above the equator, where the deserts are today. This is a new idea in geology, it was fully accepted by geologists only 35 years ago.

Related topics:
Earthquakes;
The ring of fire;
Volcanoes.

Find out more about Plate Tectonics:
Nasa On the Move;
Triassic Map;
Plate techtonics.

Volcanoes back to the board game

Volcanoes are linked to Plate Tectonics, the movement of the plates causes eruptions to take place. Evidence of a volcanic eruption in the Jurassic is found in the Fuller's Earth clay. It is made of ash from a volcano. Where plates meet and one descends below the other, highly explosive volcanoes occur in mountain chains. Where two plates separate, moving away from each other, the gap is filled by lava coming from less explosive volcanoes, mostly under the sea.

Find out more about volcanoes:
Volcanoes;
The geology of the Bathroom.

Chalk back to the board game

Chalk is a pure white limestone rock found on the Jurassic Coast, it is made of millions and millions of microfossils. It formed in a vast warm sea surrounded by deserts in the Cretaceous period about 65-80 million years ago.

Find out more about Chalk:
Chalk;
Cretaceous map.

Dinosaurs die out, 65 million years ago back to the board game

Why did the most successful dynasty of animals, the dinosaurs die out 65 million years ago? It may have been an asteroid that hit the Earth or it may have been volcanic activity on a vast scale, no one knows for sure but scientists agree something big happened?

On the Jurassic Coast no evidence of dinosaurs becoming extinct has been found, yet? This is because at that time the area was under the sea. However many marine creatures also disappeared at the same time and marine fossils disappear from the rock record too.

Find out more about the extinction of the Dinosaurs:
What killed the dinosaurs?.

Mammals back to the board game

At Durlston on the Jurassic Coast, fossils of small mammals that lived in the age of the dinosaurs have been found. They are early Cretaceous in age and are very very small. To find them you need a large amount of rock, sieved in the laboratory. Jaws and teeth have been found. From the same beds dinosaur footprints have been found.

Find out more about mammals:
Mesozoic Mammals.

The Fossil Forest and Dinosaur footprints. back to the board game

The Purbeck beds have a unique fossil forest and palaeo-soil (ancient soil) preserved within them. At Lulworth and Portland you can see the remains of this forest. Fossil wood and the algae that grew around the base of the trees is seen. In another layer hundreds of dinosaur footprints have been found.

Find out more about fossil forests and dinosaur footprints:
The Fossil Forest;
Dinosaur trackways.

Portland Limestone back to the board game

Portland Limestone is the most famous building stone in the world. It is used for magnificent buildings like St. Paul's Cathedral in London. It formed in a warm tropical sea near the end of the Jurassic period. The rock has no grain in it so it can be carved to form beautiful shapes for masonry.

Find out more about Portland Limestone:
Map of the Late Jurassic;
Portlands Stone;
Temple Bar.

Ammonites back to the board game

Ammonites were marine creatures related to Nautilus and Octopus. They had a coiled shell and there were many different species in the Jurassic and Cretaceous. At Charmouth and Lyme Regis they are common fossils and can be found by beach combing along the shore, between boulders.

Find out more about Ammonites:
Charmouth Centre.

Ichthyosaur back to the board game

The Ichthyosaurs were the hunters of the Jurassic and Cretaceous seas. They looked and probibly lived like our modern Dolphins. There were many species ranging from small to very large, more like whales!

Find out more about Ichtyosaus:
Ichthyosaur.

Scelidosaurus back to the board game

Scelidosaurus is a dinosaur, the earliest dinosaur to be found in the Jurassic rocks of the Jurassic Coast. It is found at Charmouth in one thin layer. Boulders fall to the beach and sometimes the fossil bones of Scelidosaurus are found in them. They are very rare and a mystery. Scelidosaurus was a land animal, so why have it's fossils been found at Charmouth? Charmouth was under the sea, so only marine fossil should be found?

Did it swim? Was it washed into the sea, maybe by a storm or a tidal wave? We just don't know. Scelidosaurus is the earliest known dinosaur on the Jurassic Coast but is it the oldest dinosaur?

Find out more about Scelidosaurus:
Scelidosaurus.

Desert Sandstone back to the board game

Sand blown about by the wind forms dunes in the desert and we can see this in the cliffs of East Devon at Budleigh Salterton. Red fine grained sandstone from the Triassic Period.

Is this the Oldest Dinosaur? No it's a large amphibian! back to the board game

You are know in the Triassic and these ceatures lived along rivers which ran through the deserts of East Devon 225 million years ago!

Relevant Topics:
Plate tectonics.

Find out more about Amphibians and the Triassic Period:
Early Amphibians;
Triassic Map.

Is this the Oldest Dinosaur? back to the board game

A dinosaur skeleton was found near Bristol which comes from the LateTriassic. Fossils have been found on the East Devon stretch of the World Heritage Site, but up until now none of these has been a dinosaur. The rocks on the east Devon coast are a little older, from the Middle and Early Triassic. They could however yield a fossil dinosaur in the future and who knows it may be you that finds it? Just because we have not yet found it does not mean that it is not there.

Find out more about early dinosaurs:
Triassic Dinosaurs;
The 1st Dinosaurs?.