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
The total number of dinosaurs was much greater than the total number of humans. Dinosaurs roamed Earth for about 165 million year, and there were about 700 species.
In contrast, the earliest known genus of the human lineage appeared on Earth about 5.8 million years ago. Lucy is a member of that species, but she was not part of the human species, and we aren’t even certain she is one of our ancestors. But assuming she is, the number of human ancestors is much, much smaller than the number of dinosaurs.
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