Lyndhurst native Dan Cashman knows a lot about dinosaurs, but there is one thing he cannot figure out. Despite years of working with children under his belt, running a day care center and performing as Professor-osaurus, he does not know what it is about dinosaurs that seems to captivates children’s imaginations.

"If I knew that, I’d probably make a fortune," said Dan Cashman. "They instantly gravitate toward them."

As an example, Dan Cashman pulls out an eight-inch tooth from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Add 25 more of those and one could see what helped make the dinosaur a favorite among children.

Before Dan Cashman began driving around the area in his "Tricera-truck," a head turning sport utility vehicle with a fiberglass replica of a Triceratops head strapped to the top, he ran Rhymes and Reasons day care center in Wood-Ridge.

The Sept. 11 attacks took the lives of a number friends and relatives of the Cashmans and their employees. The day care center closed up shop and Dan Cashman and his wife, Marilyn Cashman, started "Dinosaur Falls" in East Rutherford.

Two years ago, the business went under. So Dan and Marilyn Cashman took their show on the road. Today, Cashman brings his Triceratops head, a 20-foot timeline of Earth’s history, boxes of fossils and sometimes a bearded dragon and a regal ball python to schools and scout meetings around the area.

The bearded dragon, "Spike," has a similar bone structure to a dinosaur called an Archioptrix. "Bearded dragons are a really mild animal unless you happen to be a meal worm or a cricket," said Dan Cashman.

Dan Cashman gets his fossils from near and far, as close as High Point State Park and as far away as Morocco. The Meadowlands area has very little in terms of dinosaur fossils, because the area was part of a lava flow in prehistoric times.

Several years ago, Chinese scientists answered a long-standing debate over whether dinosaurs were more like reptiles or birds. The answer came when they discovered dinosaurs had a four-chambered heart like a bird. "What would a T-Rex look like with feathers like a parakeet?" asked Dan Cashman.

One of Dan Cashman’s most prized possessions is a dinosaur egg from a Hadrosaurus, the first dinosaur to be found in New Jersey. The egg came from Haddonfield, where the Hadrosaurus got its name.

Dan Cashman, a self-taught dinosaur enthusiast, starts off his performances in a white lab coat. He speaks softly and slowly with bursts of energy and enthusiasm, leaving parents and teachers amazed at how well he manages to keep the attention of large groups of children entertained. Some of the children laugh hysterically and others gasp as Dan Cashman catches them off guard with his antics.

Halfway through his performance, he dons archaeologist gear and shows children how dinosaur footprints left alone for millions of years are uncovered.

The job starts with jackhammers, bulldozers and dynamite and moves to sledgehammers, brushes, tweezers, toothbrushes and dental picks. While not a professional archaeologist, the best dig Dan Cashman ever went on was in his brother-in-laws driveway, where he found brachiopods, an ancient shellfish, in a load of gravel.

While the T-Rex remains a favorite, Dan Cashman remains floored by how every child has a favorite dinosaur and many children pick obscure ones as favorites. "Dinosaurs are so pervasive in our society," he said.

Cashman describes himself as the biggest kid on the block. "Kids and dinosaurs, they go together," he said.