Colegio Dr. Roque Diaz Tizol
Yabucoa, P.R.
The Mesozoic era
Bilogy Class
Mr. Kim
10th grade
1 /27/ 14
Introduction
In this report I will be explaining a few facts about the Mesozoic era coming from the documentary “The day the Mesozoic Died”. This small film expresses how in many ways these creatures once inhabited our planet and disappeared completely in almost a blink of an eye. The Mesozoic Era could also be described simply as what most of our population knows as the Dinosaur Era.
These creatures once dominated our lands with tremendous sizes, shapes and species and although humans were never able to see one in person,
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Scientists later found that signs of this collision seemed evident near the town of Chicxulub in Mexico in the form of a gargantuan crater more than 110 miles (180 kilometers) wide. The explosion, likely caused by an object about 6 miles (10 km) across, would have released as much energy as 100 trillion tons of TNT, more than a billion times more than the atom bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, further work suggested the Chicxulub impact occurred either 300,000 years before or 180,000 years after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. The scientists involved in this investigation were Sean B. Carroll, Alan Hidebrand, Kirk Johnson, Mark Nielsen, and Jan Smit. The places visited in the film to prove the investigation were Gubbio, Italy, Zumaia, Spain, Brazos river, Texas, Dakotas and Montana. They found many pieces of evidence for example patterns, rocks, leaves and elements. But the most important piece of evidence was the crater in the gulf of Mexico called the Chicxulub which led out to match every hypothesis the geologists made.
The chemical elements they discovered were important for the fact they are not Earth made elements and come from outer space. The investigation took place in 2012. My personal opinion for this
The article explains the consequences of their efforts to drill into the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, the site where the asteroid supposedly struck. There was a lot of arguments as to which scientist would take the core section to analyze. In the end
In conclusion, we rely on fossils and other scientific findings to help us understand how dinosaurs lived so long ago. The Jurassic Period was one of the more fascinating periods to learn about and one of the more interesting things that I’ve
The fossil deposits at the Chicxulub site suggest that the mineral layer in the crater was deposited after the impact, but before the extinction of the dinosaurs and other species. Keller proposes two possible explanations for this. The first explanation is that the sediments were deposited as the backwash of a giant tsunami that occurred after the impact (Keller 2004).
The Chicxulub crater is located on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula and evaded detection for decades because it was buried while at the same time being reserved beneath a kilometre of younger rocks and sediments. Most scientists now agree that the Chicxulub crater is evidence that a huge asteroid or comet crashed into the Earth's surface 65 million years ago causing the extinction of more than 70% of the living species on the planet, including the dinosaurs. This collision idea was first popularised in 1980 by Luis Alvarez and his son, Walter Alvarez, where they developed the Alvarez hypothesis. They were studying a one centimetre-thick layer in Italy, which
Dinosaurs ruled the earth for over 65 million years and thankfully for the human race, they became extinct. Ultimately, only a major catastrophe could completely wipe out an entire species, let alone an entity of dinosaurs and the debacle on the causes of dinosaur extinction have flooded the minds of paleontologists for centuries. Geologist and zoologist Stephen Jay Gould published “Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs,” to compare scientific and speculative causes of dinosaur decimation. Personally, I found this passage very informational and enjoyed reading it. Gould provides three theories that capture the reader’s curiosity, allowing room for pondering in one’s mind.
Sedimentary rocks interpret dinosaur habitats through encased environmental structures of the past. Through sedimentary rocks, paleoecologists’ can examine the arranged formation of sedimentary structures to specify what type of environment the dinosaurs’ lived in. An example of a specific sedimentary rock structure can be seen through formed weathering and ripple marks by how wind and sand formed distinct patterns in the past layered sediment. These arrangements provide interpretations on the structure of the sediment and the habitat of encased fossils, through modern day comparisons
The main dinosaurs that died off were Sauropod dinosaurs, long necked, four legged dinosaurs, and stegosauridae, class holding Stegosaurus. Other species that died include ammonites, similar to the living animals called nautilus, many marine reptiles, and bivalves, relatable to modern mollusca. Not much is known about this extinction. It is mainly linked to climate change. So far, no connection to volcanic activity or an asteroid has been made. This extinction gave way to the Cretaceous Period.
Assess the different hypotheses put forward for the mass extinctions at the end of the Permian and Cretaceous (KT) Periods.
According to Holmes, the Time of the Giants begins by looking at the geological and its ecological conditions which creates opportunities for the expansion of dinosaurs in the Middle and Late Jurrasic Epochs. It describes widespread changes to ocean and land enviroments, including worldwide climate changes that served as catalysts for the spread of the jurassic “giants”: the dinosaurs. The book explores the broad ranges of the largest and biggest of all land animalsand tells the discoveries and changing scientific images of the early so-called “giants” over the past one hundred fifty years. By the end of the Jurassic Period, several evolutionary trends were in motion that would be played out by the giant creatures, dinosaurs, in the next
The first scholars that existed named the whole period of human devolvement the “Stone Age.” The stone age is divided into three periods which are Paleolithic which means the old Greek age, Mesolithic and Neolithic which is the new Greek age. The Paleolithic and Neolithic stone ages have many great differences and has changed greatly between the two periods.
The Mesozoic Era is an interval of geological time from about 252 to 66 million years ago. It is also called the Age of Reptiles, a phrase introduced by the 19th century paleontologist Gideon Mantell .
In the Paleolithic Era, humans relied on hunting and gathering to live, living off the resources the environment provided and moving on when resources became scarce. This nomadic lifestyle allowed them to eat a variety of plans and animals, including birds, mammoths, bison, deer, rodents, roots, and berries. Because plants grew, fruited, and matured at different times of the year, gathering remained a fairly constant means to provide food throughout the year. Although small animals and young, ill, wounded, or old animals were easier to hunt successfully, hominids quickly mastered the techniques to hunt large mammals, such as bison, rhinoceros, horses, woolly mammoths, and mastodons, to feed more people. To do so, these hunters had to have high levels of cooperation, intelligence, communication, and abstract reasoning, utilizing disguises, ambushes, camouflage, and traps.
Dinosaur extinction: An analysis of events and theories that possibly led to the dinosaurs' demise.
Jurassic is a period of time with Dinosaurs, rodents and birds. There were also island seas consisting of sharks, sea monsters and blood-red planktons. The existing plants in that period were cycads, ferns and conifers. The Mesozoic era was about 245 million years ago to 65 years ago, so it almost lasted about 180 years in total. The Mesozoic era is divided into three periods of Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. Mesozoic era means middle animals and it is the era, which the word’s fauna has changed from what is in the Paleozoic era and the most famous organisms of this era are dinosaurs. In the Mesozoic era, the extinction of more than 90 percent of species in the earth was observed and the reason behind it was mostly volcanic eruptions and climate changes. On the other hand, this era had massive changes that represented ecological niches and rise to new creatures such as rodent-size mammals and first dinosaurs. In Triassic, which was the first period of Mesozoic, the mammals and first dinosaurs existed. Later than that, the second period was Jurassic, which giant shaped dinosaurs and other kinds of dinosaurs were developed. Besides that the first flowering plants and primitive birds, with long teeth appeared in that era as well.
These techniques led to the discovery of the boundary between the two eras. A single thin layer of clay found within predominantly limestone rocks established this. By comparing the marine life found in, above, and below the clay, the marine life, like the dinosaurs, had been terribly affected by the extinction event. The percentage of life in the upper layers was dramatically lower than that in the lower. This was far more compelling than what was suggested by dinosaur’s fossils.