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Did man live with dinosaurs together? – Daniel, 9, Republic of Korea

Dear Daniel,

When I think about dinosaurs, I usually picture the big ones. I think of triceratops with its pointy horns or apatosaurus with its long, long neck.

I asked my friend John Blong if those dinos ever lived with people. He’s an environmental archeologist at Washington State University. He studies early humans.

He told me that people and dinosaurs never lived at the same time. Well, mostly.

Dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago when a giant asteroid crashed to Earth. It threw up tons of dust and soot. It made Earth super cold and dark. It stayed that way for a long time. The world became a very hard place to live. Eventually, 75% of all living things died, including all the big dinosaurs.

People didn’t live on Earth at that time. The only mammals that lived back then were tiny. They looked like shrews or moles. It would take millions of years before mammals adapted enough to become primates. Scientists think the first humans showed up about 300,000 years ago. That was long after the dinosaurs died out.

But some dinosaurs survived the asteroid.

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Why are dolphins mammals and not fish? – Evie, 9, Washington

Dear Evie,

As fellow mammals, you and I have a lot in common. It’s easy to see our similarities because humans and cats spend lots of time together. We may even be roommates or family.

But humans and cats don’t usually have dolphin besties. It’s harder to see what we have in common when our bodies and lives are so different.

To better understand mammal life, I talked with my friend Kevin Turner. He teaches marine biology at Washington State University.

“The name mammal comes from the presence of mammary glands,” Turner said. “So, the major characteristic of mammals is that we have mammary glands to produce milk for our offspring.”

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Why do marine mammals have horizontal tails, but fish have vertical tails? – Peyton, 11, Washington

Dear Peyton,

When you think about a whale, you probably picture an enormous sea creature without legs. But what if I told you the first whale had four legs and could walk on land?

I talked about whales and other marine mammals with my friend Kevin Turner. He teaches marine biology at Washington State University.

He told me marine mammals have horizontal tails because they flex their bodies up and down to move. Fish flex their bodies side to side. Scientists think it has to do with the way different animals evolved.

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Do bats have habits? -Elliot 

Dear Elliot,

You are onto something. Quick, to the bat-lab! That’s where I met up with my friend Christine Portfors, a scientist at Washington State University who studies fruit bats.

Portfors explained that while bats don’t quite have habits like humans, they do have behaviors.

Bats are nocturnal. They sleep during the day and wake up in the early evening. The first thing they’ll do when they wake up is fly around and around their caves for a while.

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