We’re all a bit dinosaur crazy in our house at the moment, and like most small children, Charlie is fascinated by poop. He loved the idea of making poop for his toy dinosaurs while the older children put a lot of thought into how and why different dinosaurs might have different poop.
Dinosaurs had to eat hundreds of pounds of plants or flesh each day, so you can imagine back then, there was a lot of poop around. Dinosaur faeces were a source of food for smaller animals and bacteria and helped keep the vegetation lush and green by adding nutrients back to the soil.
Dinosaur Poop Recipe
You’ll need brown play dough or salt dough for the poo.
Leaves and/or seeds for the herbivore poo
Salt dough bones for the carnivore poo.
We made ours like play dough using this play dough recipe from The Imagination Tree.
If you want to bake the poo to demonstrate fossilised poo ( coprolite ), you need to make it more like salt dough.
Easy Salt Dough recipe
1 cup of plain flour
½ a cup of salt
½ cup warm water
Brown food colouring
Simply mix all the ingredients together to make a smooth dough you can mould into shapes. We made dinosaur bones ( salt dough with no food colouring ) to add to our carnivore play dough poo.
When you’re ready to bake the salt dough, place it in an oven at 150 degrees for about 2 hours or until hard.
Herbivores
Herbivore dinosaurs ate plants and seeds. Examples of herbivore dinosaurs are Triceratops, Apatosaurs, Ankylosaurus and Maiasaura.
We added leaves to our herbivore poop.
Carnivores
Dinosaurs that ate meat are called carnivores. Examples of carnivores are Herrerasaurus, T- Rex and Utahraptor.
We added salt dough bones to our carnivore poop.
Omnivores
Dinosaurs that ate plants and meat are called omnivores. An example of an omnivore is the Oviraptor which ate small plants, eggs and insects.
Piscivores
Dinosaurs that ate fish are called piscivores. An example of a piscivore is the Plesiosaur which ate fish.
Famous Fossil Collector
Mary Anning discovered fossilised dinosaur poo in Dorset. She could tell where the dinosaurs lived and what they ate from studying the coprolites.
Do Coprolites smell?
They don’t! Over time the organic matter is replaced by mineral deposits. It’s actually quite hard to tell a coprolite from a rock. Coprolites are actually very rare as animal faeces usually decay rapidly.
More Dinosaur Poop Ideas
Make a game where friends have to match the poo to the dinosaur. Change the things found in the poo and the size of the poo.
Last Updated on April 12, 2023 by Emma Vanstone
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