I. When I was very little, I found that I carried a great fascination for fossils and their study, more so than any other study.
II. I am very excited to share that with you all.
III. Paleontology is the study of fossils and ancient animals.
IV. Fossils are the evidence left behind by those ancient creatures.
A. Body fossils are the hard parts left behind, such as teeth or bones.
B. Trace fossils are marks that have been preserved such as foot prints.
C. Chemicals fossils are organic substances left behind, such as DNA.
D. Fossils are how paleontologist are able to calculate and accurately estimate the size and shape of the amazing creatures that once lived where we do today.
V. Today, I want to share the remarkable and almost unbelievable
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It is not a dinosaur, but a pterosaur.
1. According to DK Publishing in Prehistoric Life, pterosaurs are flying reptiles related to dinosaurs and flew with wings formed by skin stretched over their forearms.
a. Went extinct by the end of the Cretaceous
C. Named after the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, god of death and resurrection, according to Andrew Campbell.
D. In Prehistoric Life, the immense size of the pterosaur is described
1. Basketball players pale in comparison to the length of its skull.
2. It had a wingspan larger than most span planes, 15m
3. It ate dinosaurs, rather than fish, like other pterosaurs, to fuel its metabolic needs.
E. Despite its size, it only weighed 250kg due to a complex system of air sacs in its bones, so stated in Prehistoric Life.
Transition: This last one is a personal favorite.
I. Titanoboa is the largest snake to have lived.
A. It was first found in the coal mines of Cerrejon, Colombia in 2004 by a group of paleontologists, led by Jonathan Bloch and Jason Head.
B. It is as thick as a man’s waist, or about 3ft
C. It grew to be about 40ft long, or longer than a school bus.
D. Its weight was about 2 tons
E. It fed on crocodiles and turtles.
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Amazing creatures roamed where we stand, and all over the world.
A. Just in Texas, we had the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Quetzalcoatlus, Titanoboa in South America and Spinosaurus the largest theropod, bipedal dinosaurs in Africa, according to Prehistoric Life
II. Paleontology is the study of these creatures and through fossils, we are able to cultivate an image.
III. I guess why I want to do it, is because it’s a picture into a world so bizarrely different, like a fantasy, which I am infatuated
1) Carroll, R. L. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York.
The first fossils were found in 1997 and the latest fossils were discovered in 2001. “Researchers found the fossil remains of several of the ancient individuals along the foothills of the west margin of the southern Afar Rift, located in Ethiopia’s Middle Awash study area. The Middle Awash is located about 140 miles northeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city, and about 50 miles south of Hadar, where the 3.2 million-year-old “Lucy” fossils were discovered nearly 30 years ago”(Rickman 2001) .... ...
...s much of the time that some people have been led to believe. This belief had begun when they had discovered a fossil that has since been given the title “Selam”. “Selam” is the skull of a three year old female Australopithecus Afarensis who is believed to have been alive about 3.3 million years ago, having been discovered in the year 2000 in Ethiopia, Dikika by a paleoanthropologist named Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged. With Selam they have found that with the skeleton of her, that it shares many similarities when compared to the bone structure of an ape, meaning that the A. Afarensis may have lived a somewhat arboreal lifestyle. They at first checked the shoulder blades of “Selam”, with both remaining in fully intact which is considered to be very rare due the fact that the shoulder blades had remained intact through 3.3 million years, as it would allow them to find out
Paleontologist L.B. Tarlo said that it was very difficult to ascertain the length of Liopleurodon. This was so because no complete skeleton was found. He then predicted from the skull, the skull was approximately one-seventh of the total length of the body. When we apply this ratio to the largest skull specimen of L. ferox, the total length of the body comes out to be a little more than 10 meters. The normal size from this calculation would be around 5-7 meters in length. The weight of it was estimated to be around between 75 to 150 tons. The more recent study and the finding of the complete skull of Liopleurodon. It showed the total size of the body was actually five times more the length of the skull. Thus, reducing the expected body size of it furthermore. The maximum size that a L. ferox could reach is just up to 6.4
In 2000, Dr. Philip D. Gingerich, a paleontologist from the University of Michigan, and his associates discovered two primitive whale fossils in the Balochistan Province of Pakistan. By dating the limestone located in the Habib Rahi Formation of the Balochistan Province, Gingerich estimated these fossils to be about 47 million years old. According to author David Braun of National Geographic News, “The researchers have classified one, Rodhocetus balochistanensis, as a new species of an existing genus, and the other, Artiocetus clavis, as a new species and new genus” (Braun, 5). The discovery of these two fossils suggests that the closest living relative of these primitive whales could possibly be the modern day hippopotamus. This suggested relationship is based on similarities in the bone structure between the two animals.
...ll. This group still remained successful during the Jurassic period and had a wide geopraphic distribution. Other reptiles evolved to not only live on land, but to fly. The earliest known birds appeared during this period; Archaeoteryx being the first to be considered the intermediate between the birds and predatory dinosaurs. It is debated on whether this ancient bird could actually fly or merely glid from tree to tree. Carnosaurus, meaning “meat-eating” is another group of dinosaurs that ruled during the Jurassic. With such large herbivorous prey animals, the correlation of these large predators make sense of why they were so common. An Allosaurus was one of the most common Carnosaurs in North America. Upon finding numerous intact skeletons in fossil beds, it has been reported that the Allosaurus was superficially similar to the later evolving Tyrannosaurus rex.
are found world wide which makes some of them serve as excellent index fossils, and it is
Until recently, scientists believed the chances of finding a fossilized dinosaur heart were extremely slim. The heart belonged to a 66 million year old dinosaur found in Harding County in Northwestern South Dakota. The dinosaur, found in 1993, weighed over 650 pounds and was 13 feet long. The dinosaur was in fairly good condition with the exception of the left side of the skeleton. The small, plant-eating Thescelosaurus, nicknamed ‘Willo’ has been acquired by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Thescelosaurus was an ornithischian, or "bird-hipped," dinosaur that lived in the latter stage of the Cretaceous period. This was approximately 1 million years before the end of the dinosaur era. Native to North America, its range extended from the northern United States up into Canada. Since using the 3-D software to reveal Willo's heart, scientists have also used it to create 3-D images of the fossil's skull, and of remains from other dinosaurs in the museum's collection. (Fisher, Paul)
The Triceratops were very interesting dinosaurs. They were very smart and strategic. They moved in herds and used mating calls. They were very complex. They had an interesting body shape that gave them an advantage towards their predators. They were known for their horns and parrot-like beaks. They were herbivores that lived in North America. Triceratopses were very interesting.
The Burgess Shale Fauna is a fauna that was constructed based on a group of fossils that were initially found, in the Burgess Shale area in the Canadian Rockies (Gould, 1989). They are a very important group of fossils as “modern multicellular animals make their first unprotected appearance in the fossil record some 570 million years ago” through this group (Gould, 1989, pp. 24). Moreover the Burgess Shales are known to have preserved the soft parts of animals enabling us to get a better understanding of life at the time.
Austalopithicus meaning “southern ape” was the first specimen to be found. The Austalopithicus was found in African and was know to have lived from 4.2 to around 1.0 million years ago (Standford 251). They had a small body like an ape that would get approximately 64 to around 100 pounds. They had a big jaw with a U-shaped mouth of small teeth. The brain size of a Australopithicus was small and would get approximately 340 to 500 cc, which is in the same range as gorillas and chimpanzees brain sizes. The top of their skull was of a bony ridge. They were able to walk on their two feet and had a small pelvis. The Australopithecus were found with stone tools, which made them the first stone tool makers.
11.) Fossils - are the remains of plants or animals that have been preserved over centuries in the strata or layers.
With its abundance of genera, the Burgess Shale is one of the world’s most important fossil fields. It’s discovery in 1909 led to over 100 years of paleontological study in the Canadian Rockies, a majority of which has been carried out in two quarries known as the Walcott and Raymond quarries (Hagadorn, 2002). Though he was originally in search of trilobites in the Burgess Shale Formation, paleontologist Charles Walcott also discovered a diverse group of soft- and hard-bodied fossils, from algae and sponges to chordates and cirripeds (Hagadorn, 2002). Soft-bodied fossils are incredibly rare due to their delicate structure and susceptibility to decay, so it is hard-bodied fossils that more regularly occur in fossil findings. However over 75,000 soft-bodied specimens have been found in the Burgess Shale formation (Hagadorn, 2002). These specimens are preserved in layers of shale formed from deposits of fine mud. One of the most significant species discovered is the Pikaia gracilens. Believed to be an early chordate, the Pikaia gracilens existed very close to the beginning of the evolutionary path that ultimately lead to humans (McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia, 2006).
When the average person thinks about zoology, they usually think about a zoo and or animals. As said in General Zoology, many questions come with this topic. “What is life? In what ways are the various kinds of animals alike or unlike in structure, internal processes, and modes of life? How do animals carry on their activities? How are the many kinds related to one another? In what ways does man resemble and differ from other living things? The answers to many of these questions are provided by the science of zoology.” (General Zoology, page 3). While zoology does involve animals, the general study of zoology is far more complicated then one would imagine. Zoology is a branch of biology that studies the classification, origins, habitats and behaviors of organisms. Someone who studies zoology is a zoologist, and has the tasks of learning about new species and their habitats. It is a job that if mastered, can be one of the most fulfilling and knowledgeable careers someone can obtain.
Reptiles are vertebrate, or backboned animals constituting the class Reptilia and are characterized by a combination of features, none of which alone could separate all reptiles from all other animals.The characteristics of reptiles are numerous, therefore can not be explained in great detail in this report. In no special order, the characteristics of reptiles are: cold-bloodedness; the presence of lungs; direct development, without larval forms as in amphibians; a dry skin with scales but not feathers or hair; an amniote egg; internal fertilization; a three or four-chambered heart; two aortic arches (blood vessels) carrying blood from the heart to the body, unlike mammals and birds that only have one; a metanephric kidney; twelve pairs of cranial nerves; and skeletal features such as limbs with usually five clawed fingers or toes, at least two spinal bones associated with the pelvis, a single ball-and-socket connection at the head-neck joint instead of two, as in advanced amphibians and mammals, and an incomplete or complete partition along the roof of the mouth, separating the food and air passageways so that breathing can continue while food is being chewed. These and other traditional defining characteristics of reptiles have been subjected to considerable modification in recent times. The extinct flying reptiles, called pterosaurs or pterodactyls, are now thought to have been warm-blooded and covered with hair. Also, the dinosaurs are also now considered by many authorities to have been warm-blooded. The earliest known bird, archaeopteryx, is now regarded by many to have been a small dinosaur, despite its covering of feathers The extinct ancestors of the mammals, the therapsids, or mammallike reptiles, are also believed to have been warm-blooded and haired.