It's good to be back

Hello! Sorry for my idleness. I have been very busy with projects. As you may expect, I am also looking forward to Jurassic World. Today starts Mosasaur Week. What exactly is a mosasaur. If you are a die-hard dinosaur fan or rock collector, you may be familiar with them. Mosasaurs to start, were a type of marine reptile from the Late Cretaceous Period. Mosasaurs are named because the first specimen to be described was found in a quarry near the Meuse River in the Netherlands. So "mosa" meaning Meuse and "sauros" meaning lizard translate to Meuse River Lizard. Mosasaurs did not just live in Europe, they have also been found in Africa, Turkey, Japan, Russia, New Zealand, and Canada, but most commonly in the Midwestern United States. Mosasaurs evolved from land-living monitor lizards like the Komodo dragon that fled to the sea, to escape the mighty dinosaurs. As soon as they became adapted to the water, they grew very large. Some were almost 60 feet long! Mosasaurs, like the snakes of today, had double hinged jaws. This meant that they could have swallowed their prey in one bite! Although large sharks fed on mosasaur young, it was usually the other way around with the adults. The battles weren't always that clean. Teeth from sharks such as Squalicorax and Cretoxyrhina have been found in the bones of large mosasaurs. Mosasaurs became extinct about 66 million years ago, along with the dinosaurs and flying reptiles

A giant mosasaur tries to catch a large Mauisaurus plesiosaur, in what is now New Zealand, sometime around 75 million years ago





The Walsh Museum of Ancient Life's planned exhibits for 2015 preview (part 1)

The Walsh Museum of Ancient Life, the main sponsor of this blog has shared the plans for its exhibits for 2015. All of the exhibits will focus on the evolution and the different time periods of dinosaurs and we will give some background information about each one.

The first exhibit is Jurassic North America. This will focus on the animal and plant life of the Late Jurassic in North America, 150 million years ago. Polished dinosaur bone specimens and quality replicas will be on display along with informative signs and hopefully colorful dioramas. Maps courtesy of Ron Blakey, Colorado Plateau Geosystems

North America, 150 million years ago

Favorite Dinosaur Week (cancelled)

Today is the start of favorite dinosaur week. Please choose your favorite dinosaur from the list below and leave a comment with the name of that dinosaur. At the end of the week, the top 7 dinosaurs chosen will be covered in detail next week. (Dinosaurus marked with a * are not actually dinosaurs but other prehistoric reptiles)

• Allosaurus
• Ankylosaurus
• Archaeopteryx*
• Brachiosaurus
• Brontosaurus
• Camarasaurus
• Centrosaurus (Monoclonius)
• Dilophosaurus
• Dimetrodon*
• Diplodocus
• Edaphosaurus*
• Edmontosaurus (Anatosaurus)
• Iguanodon
• Mosasaur*
• Ornitholestes
• Pachycephalosaurus
• Parasaurolophus
• Plesiosaur*
• Pterodactyl*
• Triceratops
• Tyrannosaurus Rex
• Velociraptor

Last day of Extinction Week

Hope you had a good extinction week. Extinction week is raise awareness about animals living today that are under the threat of extinction. Some examples of species that are almost extinct are the Siberian tiger, the panda, and the black rhinoceros. Many species are under threat from human activity. If you want to help endangered animals and plants to survive here is what to do

• Do not buy a products that come from endangered animals such as fur coats and snakeskin of other reptile skin purses
• Be wary of exotic foods. Shark fin soup in China is one example
• Do not release exotic animals into the wild. They can be a threat for other animals in your local ecosystem
• Do not keep rare or exotic plants.

The Cretaceous Mass Extinction (65 MYA)

The Cretaceous Mass Extinction is also know as the "dinosaur extinction". This extinction wiped out the dinosaurs, flying and marine reptiles, and toothed birds forever. 70% of all animals died and 90% of the plants. There are several theories to this event. One is that the dinosaurs were to slow and stupid to survive. But there are several problems about this theory. One of these problems is that many scientists have shown that some dinosaurs, especially that flesh-eaters were very active, smart, and warm-blooded during their reign. Another problem is that the theory states that dinosaurs went extinct some time, 150-100 million years ago, but how do you explain 70-66 million year old fossils of the last dinosaurs. These pieces of evidence show that the "to stupid to survive" theory is a very unlikely reason for the dinosaur extinction. Another theory is the environment got to cold and cold blooded dinosaurs died out. This theory also has some evidence to disprove it. Yes the giant plant-eating dinosaurs were probably cold-blooded, died out because of the cold, and starved the meat-eaters. But by the end of the Cretaceous, there were hardly any of the giant plant-eating dinosaurs left on Earth, and how about the reptiles under the sea, even if the temperature of the water got colder, most marine reptiles living at the end of the Cretaceous were warm blooded and could have adapted to the temperature change. Yet another theory is that it got to hot, but it brings up a similar problem to the "to cold to survive" theory. If the oceans got to hot for the marine reptiles almost nothing, including our modern birds and mammal ancestors would have made it. Out far out in a cloud of comets in a deep freeze at the edge of our solar system, there exists a darker twin of the sun. It is a failed star. It never got enough mass to shine. This is Nemesis Star. As it wanders the dark void between the stars, it sucks up comets into its orbit. The Nemesis Star returns every 25 million years to the orbit of the Earth and sheds its comets on to the Earth, creating a heavy bombardment. Geological evidence shows that it aligns with dinosaur extinction and other "minor" extinctions. When the dinosaurs met the Nemesis Star they knew it was there last. But there is a problem with this theory. The Nemesis Star may not even exist. At first scientists thought that for every steadily shining star, there was 10 failed stars. Now astronomers have turned the tables and proved for every failed star there are 10 steadily shining We may never know for sure if our sun's dark twin really exists. The most likely story is that 65 million years ago, an asteroid was heading toward the Earth, fast, very, very fast. It slammed into the Earth at a 30 degree angle with the force of 100,000 H-bombs in to the Gulf of Mexico. It sent up hundreds, maybe even thousands of hot rocks and boulders, killing all animals in the impact zone. Giant fires raged up the continent of North America, incinerating anything in their path. Giant cracks opened up in the ground trapping any unlucky animals. Giant waves flooded beaches, swamps, and forests. Later in the night as the impact died down heated clouds released acid rain. Many dinosaurs survived this because of there hard scaly skin, but the trees and plants were burned up. As snow began to fall great herds of plant-eaters hopelessly searched for food, but found none and died. The meat-eating dinosaurs also fed on the plant-eating dinosaurs carcasses as long as they could, but when the food ran out they eventually killed each other in hunger. This probably lasted for a couple of months. As soon as the long, dark winter was over, a new era dawned. The world was almost the same as it was before the asteroid strike, but something was missing. The dinosaurs and flying reptiles. They could not make it through the dark and cold and eventually perished, but the dinosaurs may not really be extinct. Examination of fossils and scientific tests of dinosaur and bird DNA shows that birds are really dinosaurs! So if you want to see a dinosaur just look up in a tree

An asteroid slamming into the Earth is the prime theory of why the dinosaurs went extinct

The Triassic Mass Extinction (200 MYA)

more than 50 million years after the Permian Mass Extinction, another mass extinction wiped out many species of animal life. This was the Triassic Mass Extinction. Like the Permian Mass Extinction, the Triassic Mass Extinction was cause primary by volcanic activity. It all started with the break up of a continent. During this time all the continents we know today were all crammed together in the one and giant Pangea supercontinent. The slow break up of this continent caused fissures in the ground to erupt creating volcanoes. Ammonites and other shelled cephalopods were devastated. Brachiopods greatly decreased in diversity. Crocodiles relatives and dinosaur ancestors were gone. It is very likely that a asteroid helped in this dying.

Volcanic eruptions and asteroids are believed to be the cause of the Triassic Mass Extinction Event

The Permian Mass Extinction (251 MYA)

The mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, was the most devastating catastrophe to ever affect our Earth. More than 95% of all life disappeared in the endless night of extinction It started with giant lava flows in what is now Siberia. The heat and gases from the vents killed off all reptiles and amphibians for miles around. Forests were incinerated. Animals burnt to grotesque skeletons. The volcanic gases spread over the world and dumped sulfur, phosphorus, and carbon into the oceans, releasing deadly compounds such sulfur dioxide and hydrochloride killing most of the marine life. These noxious chemicals also turned the sky green and the water purple. The only organisms that benefited from this disaster were bacteria that fed on nickel and released deadly  hydrogen compounds  that further killed off most life. This extinction is sometimes called the great  dying.

The Siberian Traps, deadly eruptions that killed off 95% of all life