Level 1 - Absolute Beginner
Scientists have found a new dinosaur. But they did not dig in the ground this time.
The fossil was in a museum for nearly 100 years. People forgot about it. Now experts looked at it again.
The fossil is about 120 million years old. The dinosaur was a meat eater. It was about as big as a tiger.
News reports compare it to T. rex. But people never lived with dinosaurs. The comparison is only for fun.
- fossil
- the old remains of a plant or animal in rock
- museum
- a place that shows old and special things
- dinosaur
- a huge animal that lived long ago
- expert
- a person who knows a lot about a subject
- tiger
- a big wild cat with stripes
- meat
- animal flesh used as food
- forget
- to not remember
- compare
- to show how two things are alike or different
Level 2 - Elementary
A fossil that sat forgotten in a museum for almost a century has now been identified as a new kind of dinosaur, according to reports from October 14.
The fossil is about 120 million years old. Experts say the animal was a predator, which means it hunted other animals. It was about as large as a tiger.
Some reports compared the new dinosaur with Tyrannosaurus rex, the most famous meat-eating dinosaur, and said it might have been more dangerous. The comparison is a figure of speech, because humans never lived at the same time as dinosaurs.
The story shows that important discoveries can wait inside museum drawers. Scientists often return to old collections with new tools and new ideas.
- identify
- to find out what something is
- century
- a period of one hundred years
- predator
- an animal that hunts other animals
- collection
- a group of things kept together
- discovery
- something found for the first time
- figure of speech
- words used in a creative way, not literally
- drawer
- a box in a piece of furniture that slides in and out
- tool
- something that helps you do a job
Level 3 - Intermediate
A fossil that lay forgotten in a museum for nearly a century has been identified as a previously unknown dinosaur, according to reports dated October 14. The animal lived about 120 million years ago.
Researchers describe it as a tiger-sized predator. Some coverage went further and suggested it may have been more dangerous than Tyrannosaurus rex, a comparison that is best read as a vivid way to convey its menace, since humans appeared tens of millions of years after the last dinosaurs.
The sources available for this report do not name the journal, the research team or the fossil's origin, so those details are left out here rather than guessed. What the reports do make clear is that the specimen sat in a collection for decades before anyone recognized its significance.
The case is far from unusual. Museum storerooms hold countless unstudied specimens, and modern techniques such as CT scanning and detailed anatomical comparison let researchers extract information that earlier scientists could not see.
- previously
- before now
- menace
- a sense of threat or danger
- vivid
- strongly clear and powerful in the mind
- specimen
- a single example of an animal, plant or rock used for study
- significance
- importance
- storeroom
- a room where things are kept
- unstudied
- not yet examined by scientists
- anatomical
- relating to the structure of a body
Level 4 - Advanced
A fossil that languished in a museum for nearly a century has been identified as a hitherto unknown dinosaur, according to reports dated October 14, adding to a long tradition of significant discoveries made not in the field but in the cabinet.
The animal, which lived roughly 120 million years ago, is portrayed as a tiger-sized predator. Some coverage ventured that it may have been more dangerous than Tyrannosaurus rex, a flourish that is best taken as rhetorical shorthand for its menace, given that humans emerged tens of millions of years after the last dinosaurs.
The material available for this report does not identify the journal, the research team or the fossil's provenance, and those particulars are accordingly omitted rather than conjectured. What the accounts establish is that the specimen sat uncatalogued in significance for decades before its true nature was recognized.
That pattern is hardly rare. Museum storerooms hold vast numbers of specimens that have never been rigorously studied, and techniques such as computed tomography and refined anatomical comparison now allow researchers to extract data that their predecessors could not perceive, so that old drawers continue to yield new species.
- languish
- to remain neglected for a long time
- hitherto
- until now
- flourish
- an exaggerated or decorative statement
- rhetorical
- intended for effect rather than literal truth
- provenance
- the place of origin of an object
- conjecture
- to guess without firm evidence
- tomography
- a technique that creates detailed images of cross-sections of an object
- predecessor
- a person who held a role or did work before another
Talk about this article with KatePractice this story's vocabulary in a real spoken conversation with your AI tutor