The Day the Dinosaurs Came to St. Andrew

By Mutzai Dabrio-Martinez

A visit from the past at a local school in Orlando brought some big surprises. When dinosaurs appeared at St. Andrew School the city was in fear. All the rescue heroes were called in. The police came, but they couldnt get the situation under control. The animal control officers came, but this was bigger than any animal they had ever seen. The army came in full force, but they dropped their weapons and fled for the hills. Finally, someone stepped forward. One fourth grader was faced with the major challenge of his life. Can he defeat the dinosaurs? Come along with us as we take an adventurous trip with Mutzai. You will learn about dinosaur behaviors and habitats. More importantly, you will learn how you, yes you, can defeat a dinosaur.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475960785

Mutzai Dabrio-Martinez

Hi, my name is Mutzai and I attend St. Andrew Catholic School. I enjoy writing books. People always ask me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” So here it is. When I grow up I will be a doctor, a teacher, an explorer, and the President of the United States. But for now, my job is to be a good student, to use my creativity and imagination, and to be the best kid that I can be. Oh yeah, and to have a lot of fun-a-lante!

Book preview

Chapter 1

This is Me

Have you ever seen a tree that looked like it had been attacked by birds, elephants and alligators at the same time? One morning on my way to school, one of the larger trees sitting along a grassy median in the school parking lot caught my attention. One of its longer limbs had been curiously snapped in the opposite direction. It looked as though something very large had brushed against it the day before. It was just hanging there, a large, brown limb that was almost as thick as my forearm. I thought for a moment that maybe a car had driven over the grassy median and had broken the tree limb. But the limb was too high for any car to have damaged it. Only a very large eighteen wheel truck or a school bus would have been tall enough to reach the limb. Perhaps one of the mirrors from these giant vehicles had hit the branch and snapped it with one swipe.

I wondered what else could have broken the limb. I thought that maybe several very big eighth graders had pulled on the limb the day before at school. I tried to imagine the scene of nine or ten eighth graders bouncing up and down on the big limb, but it was too hard to create that picture in my mind. I knew that students at my school did not do that type of thing, and it just didn’t seem possible. To add to that, it had rained the day before, and there were no human footprints, truck or bus tracks next to the tree.

I looked at the tree again more carefully. Several of the leaves near its top were missing, like they had been plucked

off by the hand of a giant. The entire top of the tree was bald like my uncle Ronny. But this was a young tree, and most of the green leaves on the side of the tree were still there. A few of them had been broken in half and had a rough edge. It looked as though a caterpillar had gnawed them right down the middle. One of these leaves had fallen to the ground. In fact, it was only half of a leaf. I picked it up to look at it more closely. It looked like it had been cut in half by zigzag scissors.

I glanced at the broken tree limb again. My eyes traced the limb to the trunk of the tree and then to the ground. I stared at the grassy median that was several feet wide and about fifteen feet long. On its far end, there was a brown muddy patch. At first, I thought that it was a hole made by the tire of a truck or bus. I wondered how I could have missed it previously when I looked at the ground for tire marks. To be sure, I walked up to the muddy area to get a closer look.

Up close, it looked much different. In fact, it wasn’t a muddy patch at all. It was actually a hole that went about one foot into the grass. The muddy hole was about fourteen inches across and went straight down into the ground. It looked as though someone had taken a giant, round cookie cutter and pressed it right into the grass. The hole was so perfectly formed that you could have put a small skinny bucket into it, and it would have fit perfectly. I crouched down to inspect the dirt further. I looked at the hole carefully, but there were no signs of shovel marks. At that moment, I was absolutely sure that no eighth grader, truck or bus could have made the hole. I wondered if the hole was in some strange way related to the missing leaves on the tree.

I took a deep breath, inhaling through my nose and taking in all of the scents around me. The air near the grass had a very unique smell. I breathed in again to try to determine exactly what type of scent was coming from the ground. I knew that

I recognized its odor. It was as familiar as the smell of pizza drifting from the inside of a pizzeria in the summertime. But it had been greatly covered over by the rain, like the strong scent given off by the mint frosting on a lightly sweetened chocolate cake. Similar to the mint frosting, it was a scent that was strong enough to mask all that was under it. I took one last breath, but I was still unsure of the type of odor that was coming from the ground. Then I looked up and realized that it was time for me to go to school, and so I walked toward the front door.

By the way, my name is Mutzai Dabrio-Martinez and I am a student in fourth grade at Saint Andrew School. I am a dinosaur expert. I can tell if a dinosaur walked across the street just by smelling the air. You might be wondering what a dinosaur smells like. Well, different dinosaurs smell like different things. For example, a stegosaurus (STEG-uh-SAWR-us) is a type of dinosaur that has a special odor. It smells somewhat like two things. The scent of a stegosaurus is like a couple of new leaves picked from a tree and a dog. It smells like they were put together in a dog house for three days. Other dinosaurs that eat mostly meat smell as though someone put some chicken in a cage with an alligator and a lion for a week.

I know exactly what dinosaur footprints look like. A dinosaur’s footprint looks like a lizard’s footprint after the lizard stepped in mud or sand, but the footprint is larger. I can also tell how big a dinosaur is by how deep the dinosaur’s footprint pushes into the mud. This is because I know the weight of the dinosaur that pressed its foot into the ground. For example, a brachiosaurs’ (BRACK-ee-uh-SAWR-us) foot would go one foot into the mud. But a compsognathus’ (comp-sog-NAY-thus) foot would only go one-sixteenth of an inch into the mud. A brachiosaurus is very big. It is about the size of four or five large trucks. But a compsognathus is as small as a chicken and as heavy as a one foot baby alligator.

I can also tell the type of dinosaur that has been in an area by touching the footprints that were left. For example, a velociraptor’s (veh-loss-ih-RAP-tor) footprint feels sharp like a knife because each toe is pointed like an arrowhead. Have you ever bent your fingers and pushed your hand into wet sand? Well, the footprints of a velociraptor look just like someone bent their fingers like hooks and pushed them into the sand. In mud, a velociraptor’s foot goes down about two inches. In some movies, velociraptors have been shown to be much taller than they actually were. In a few movies, they were shown to be about as tall as a man. Actually, velociraptors were almost as tall as a third grader, but they were very fast and strong. Velociraptors also had feathers. That is one fact that many people don’t know about dinosaurs. Many of them were actually covered with feathers like birds.

I know if a dinosaur walked by a little tree or bush by looking at how bent and cracked the branches are. Some tall trees will fall down when big dinosaurs crash into them. Really big dinosaurs don’t even need to crash into a tree to knock them down. All they have to do is hit the trees with their tails, and the trees will fall to the ground. You can see if some dinosaurs have been near a tree by the bite marks left in the leaves and wood. Dinosaurs that only eat plants are called herbivores. After an herbivore has eaten a tree, it looks like an apple with a bite out of it.

When a meat eating dinosaur has