An actual 6 year-old asked me the question today. I was at a loss.
**Edit**: a lot of interesting answers, food for thought, and ideas on how to explain it to a child. Many thanks to the community!
If I summarize:
* Dinosaurs lived for a very (very) long time, all over the earth, and there were countless different species of them.
* There were few of our ancestors, from just a few species, and most of their existence was confined to limited geographical areas.
* The conditions for a fossil to form are extremely rare, and they may have been even rarer for our ancestors than they were for dinosaurs.
In: 819
Dinosaurs were around a lot longer than we have been, and so it was more likely for them to be represented in the fossil record. Also it’s too soon for humans to be fossilized and it requires very specific environmental conditions that aren’t as common anymore. But for a single species we DO find a ton of human remains. Keep in mind that only about 1% of all species that ever lived are even found as fossils. So the amount of ancient human remains we have found is pretty awesome. Probably because they’re still relatively young and there were a lot of them.
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