A critique of "ICE AGE"
In the 20th Century Fox production, ICE AGE, we are introduced to a variety of prehistoric animals trying to avoid the coming ice age by moving to warmer climates. This is a classic buddy story revolving around non-fiction animals of the ice age period. This rag tag group consists of a woolly mammoth, sabre tooth cat, a sloth and a sabre tooth squirrel. They join forces to reunite a human baby with his tribe. Of course, the sabre tooth squirrel isn't so much of the group as entertainment. Beyond, the main plot, ICE AGE, gives a glimpse into the animals and terrain that existed at this time. Certainly, some artistic license was taken with the personality instilled in these characters such as the ability to speak. However, the geographical make up and the sabre tooth cat and the traits specific to this animal are depictions worth noting for their accuracy.
First, the period depicted in this tale takes place about 20,000 years ago. A time when dinosaurs no longer roamed the earth but megafauna, large vertebrates, was abundant. Vertebrates in this group inc...
Saber Tooth Cats lived during the Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, existing for about 42 million years, from the Eocene Epoch to the end of the Pleistocene Epoch. They roamed the earth during the early to late Pleistocene era (1.6 to 10,000 years ago) along with other animals such as mammoths and mastodons, however fossils of other
1) Carroll, R. L. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York.
The question of what caused the extinction of megafauna during the Late Pleistocene period is one that archaeologists have struggled to answer for decades, but why should it matter? Discovering with certainty the cause of megafaunal extinction would simultaneously prove or disprove any of the proposed implications of each existing theory regarding this massive extinction.
Man is responsible for the extinction of the North American megafauna (Donlan 2005, Rubenstein et al. 2006). Since our ancestors are responsible for the extinction, it’s our duty to fix what our ancestors have destroyed (Donlan 2005). Moreover, according to Donlan (2005) most megafauna species in Africa and Asia are endangered or under threat. Hence, relocating them to North American is a best way of conserving them because the country carries “Global conservation implications” and contrary to that Africa and Asia practice poor conservation strategies (Donlan 2005). He further argues that N...
Rapidly evolving throughout the late Pleistocene to the early to mid Holocene, hunter-gatherer-fisher societies hunted megafauna creatures in a systematic and ethical way. When one species migrates to a different ecosystem, that species is not usually recognized as a threat to other species. Survival, during the late Pleistocene and Holocene era, was one of the most important aspects to life. Any organism, regardless of size, living within their environment had to stay alive and reproduce. During these two eras, it seems...
Mountain building and climate changes happened often in this period, as well as the breakup of Pangaea. Mammals were very popular and they were very different and everywhere. The climate was much colder now. The animals adapted to their environment and diets; meat eaters had sharp teeth for cutting and ripping, rodents had self-sharpening front teeth for gnawing and plant eaters had molars for grazing plants.
The statement in question for this assignment puts forth various assertions: that the Little Ice Age cooled the climate worldwide, that it wasn’t the coldest period since the last ice age, and that because the earth is in a natural time of warming from this period, human-made greenhouse gasses are not plausible as a source of global warming. Some of these statements are true, but there are also fallacies within these assertions.
Rock layers are like a portal through time, they show how animals looked in past and evolved through time. In these layers we see fossils, “petrified” and “preserved” forms of old organisms (Google). Scientists have seen and uncovered many different fossils and some have looked similar but from different depths in the layers. Scientists have found fossils of fish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, birds, today’s mammals, and dinosaurs. They have grouped these fossils into three periods based on how deep in the earth they were found. These periods are the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic periods. The Paleozoic period has the fossils that are the farthest down in the layer. These fossils include fish, amphibians, and reptiles. The Mesozoic period is contains all things dinosaur and is in between the Paleozoic and Cenozoic periods. Finally, the Cenozoic period contains the fossils of Mammals, birds, and today’s mammals, such as humans.
They ruled the world before the time of the dinosaurs, from the Cambrian Period to the
The Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan is a novel that discussed different climate periods that occurred. The setting of the novel occurred in Europe from 1300 to 1850. Throughout that time period the climate in Europe was changing quite drastically. The layout of this book was done chronologically and thematically. Fagan broke down the book into four different parts: Warmth and its Aftermath, Cooling Begins, The End of the “Full World”, and The Modern Warm Period. He also went further into breaking down each section from discussing the medieval warm period, to the climate seesaw, then to the specter of hunger, finally to a warmer greenhouse as well as other things in between. The way he wrote the book was not based on his personal experience. It
The debate of whether dinosaurs were cold blooded or warm blooded has been ongoing since the beginning of the century. At the turn of the century scientists believed that dinosaurs had long limbs and were fairly slim, supporting the idea of a cold blooded reptile. Recently, however, the bone structure, number or predators to prey, and limb position have suggested a warm blooded species. In addition, the recent discovery of a fossilized dinosaur heart has supported the idea that dinosaurs were a warm blooded species. In this essay, I am going to give supporting evidence of dinosaurs being both warm and cold blooded. I will provide background information on the dinosaur that was discovered and what information it provides scientists.
Fossil records from 12,000 years ago show the appearance of the Large Mammals followed by Paleoindian in Eastern North America. Another piece of the fossil record shows that the appearance of Paleoindian brought about the disappearance of the large mammals. Some people feel that, "there is evidence to suggest that rapacious hunting practice of the paleohunters in North and South America 12,000 years ago may have caused…The demise of the very animals they hunted" (Powell 1987). The evidence Powell suggests is that the extinction of a large mammal is usually followed by the appearance of humans in the fossil record. This coincidence is not only seen in the fossil records of North and South America but Europe and Asia as well. Powell shows that as human populations increased local extinctions of large mammals occurred. This was probably due to the fact that there were not many predators that could hunt the large mammals except man. For this reason it is also highly like likely that man and large mammals did not co-evolve which ultimately resulted in the extinction of large mammals.
“Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs” is written by Stephen Jay Gould, professor of geology and zoology at Harvard. This essay is one of more than a hundred articles on evolution, zoology, and paleontology published by Gould in national magazines and journals. It tells about scientific proposals for the extinction of dinosaurs – a confusing but an exciting problem that humanity tries to solve. By analyzing and describing each of the claims for the reptiles’ demise – sex, drugs, and disasters – Gould differentiates bad science from good science and explains what makes some theories silly speculations, while the other, a testable hypothesis.
necessary. Due to the thick pelt that the Woolly Mammoth has, any known Ice Age
...pdated 1995, accessed 3 Sept. 2000), Dino Buzz – What killed The Dinosaurs ? – Current Arguments,