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
Three main reasons:
1. Dinosaurs roamed the Earth for millions and millions of years. Humans in any form have only been around for about 200,000 years. This means there’s lots more dead dinos than dead humans and proto-humans. LOTS more.
2. There were lots of different dino species and if we lump all dinos fossils into one collection, there’s going to be lots of them from lots of species in the fossil record. It would be a bit like lumping all primate species into one group even if they’re not human or proto-human.
3. Dino bones were huge, and big bones tend to fossilize easier compared to small bones. Also, big bones don’t get broken up and carried away easier, so there’ll be more fossilized more or less complete (or at least large chunks) of dino bones and very few intact human and proto-human bones.
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