How do we know if a dino is an adult or a child?

Find out how scientists look for clues that say whether a skeleton is young or old.

- Written by Caitlin Syme. PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of Queensland. Published in association with theconversation.com

There are a couple of ways you can try to tell how old a dinosaur was when it died. If you cut open a fossil bone, you can see lines, just like if you were looking at the growth rings in a tree. Tree rings form when a tree grows slowly during a tough season like an icy cold winter. You can count the rings to see how many winters that tree has lived through – and because there is only one winter each year, you can work out how many years old the tree is. Easy!

Counting growth lines