New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
Albuquerque, NM
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Animalia
Stegosaurus (‘plate lizard’): A 7m long, 3t Jurassic dinosaur. The plates on its back provide temperature control- the stegosaur turns its back plates towards the sun to warm its blood, or put them in the shade to cool. Today, elephants regulate their temperature similarly by pumping blood into their big ears.
Saurophaganax (‘king of the reptile eaters’): The largest meat-eating dinosaur of the Jurassic. At 12m long and weighing ~5t, it was an ambush predator nearly as large as 13m Cretaceous Tyrannosaurus rex. Both killed by slashing the neck of their prey, as do lions and other big cats today.
Tiktaalik: A lobe-finned fish close to the ancestry of tetrapods. Like a fish, it had scales and gills, but like a tetrapod, it had a distinct neck and stout forelimbs.
Dunkleosteus: A 4.1m long Devonian era apex predator with an armored head and slicing bladelike teeth.
Dimetrodon: A Permian era predator with a sail on its back which may have acted as a radiator to help cool and warm its blood. The largest Dimetrodon reached a total length of ~4.6m and weighed up to 250 kg. Often mistakenly thought to be a dinosaur, Dimetrodon was a eupelycosaur, more closely related to mammals than dinosaurs.
Birds: Descend from dinosaurs; the first birds were covered with feathers and flew from tree to tree during the Late Jurassic. Modern birds have hollow bones, an upright posture, flight feathers, and lack teeth.
Gorgonopsids: Fierce predators of the middle to late Permian with long, narrow skulls that held saber-tooth canines. Gorgonopsids reached up to 3.5m in length and weighed up to 300 kg. Gorgonopsids were likely warm-blooded animals, and their huge gape of over 90 degrees helped them attack and grab their prey. Gorgonopsids became extinct at the end of the Permian, along with various kinds of plant-eating tetrapods.
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Plantae
Angiosperms (‘Enclosed Seeds’): Flowering plants that produces seeds that are surrounded by an ovary wall. The ovary often develops into a fruit. Flowering plants include trees, grasses, shrubs, and vegetables. Angiosperms give all nutrients to fertilized seeds which develops much faster than gymnosperms.
Gymnosperms (‘Naked Seeds’): Non-flowering plants that give all nutrients to all seeds.
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Greenhouse Gas (GHG)
The sun provides most of the energy for Planet Earth. Earth receives only a tiny fraction of the total energy emitted by the sun, but it’s enough to keep Earth much warmer than outer space.
When Earth’s surface absorbs sunlight, it warms up and sends heat back into the atmosphere.
Some of this heat escapes straight through the atmosphere back to space, but most of this energy is absorbed by the atmosphere and then released. Some of the energy goes out to space, and some returns back to Earth’s surface.
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Energy
Photovoltaic Cells: Convert solar energy into electricity.
Wind: Converts wind energy into electricity by spinning turbine blades.
Geothermal: Convert heat energy from the Earth to electricity by using heated water to spin a turbine.
Hydropower: Convert the energy of flowing water into electricity by using flowing water to spin a turbine.
Ethanol: A liquid fuel distilled from plants, such as corn or sugar cane, fast-growing grasses, or from non-edible plant matter like corn stalks or tree thinning’s. Pure ethanol generates 1/3 less energy than the same amount of gasoline, so it’s often blended with gas.
Nuclear: Created by the energy released when radioactive atoms split apart in a controlled reaction, which gasify surrounding water to spin a turbine.
Coal: Forms from ancient swampy vegetation that was buried before it decayed completely.
Oil: Forms from the incomplete decay of ancient marine life. Chemical reactions under high temperature and pressure transform the organic matter in the rock into a liquid.
Natural Gas: Forms together with crude oil or coal underground. Natural gas is mostly CH4, another product of buried, decomposing organic matter.
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Terminology
Dinosaur: A reptile with an upright limb posture (limbs are underneath the body).
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Chronology
5 Ka: Earth’s CO2 levels are ~275 ppm with average temperatures similar to today (NM Museum of Nat. History).
10.8 Ka: Earth’s CO2 levels are ~250 ppm with average temperatures ~5 cooler than today (NM Museum of Nat. History).
12-10 Ka: Clovis hunters live near Clovis, NM in Western N. America (NM Museum of Nat. History).
15 Ka: Earth’s CO2 levels are ~225 ppm (NM Museum of Nat. History).
17 Ka: Earth’s CO2 levels are ~200 ppm with average temperatures ~14-16 F cooler than today (NM Museum of Nat. History).
20 Ma: The Rio Grande rift forms, and is still active today (NM Museum of Nat. History).
70 Ma: Evolution of bees (NM Museum of Nat. History).
165 Ma: Formation of the Entrada Sandstone when much of the W. US is a vast desert (NM Museum of Nat. History).
201 Ma: Triassic extinction; massive volcanism occurs as Pangaea begins to break apart. The volcanoes inject huge amounts of CO2, SO2, and other gases into the atmosphere. World climate changed and ocean chemistry was altered. Most groups of plants and animals were not severely affected by these changes and persisted to populate the Jurassic world. Other groups could not adapt and became extinct. The Triassic extinction eliminated some groups (phytosaurs and aetosaurs) and nearly eliminated others (ammonites and amphibians).
225 Ma: Dating of the oldest known mammal, the tiny mouse-sized Adelobasileus (NM Museum of Nat. History).
252-201 Ma: Earth’s Triassic period; animals that first evolve during the Triassic (including the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, turtles, crocodiles, and mammals) continue into the Jurassic. Many organisms that had evolved before the Triassic, such as lungfishes and conifers, persisted into the Jurassic (NM Museum of Nat. History).
252 Ma: Permian extinction; the eruption of the Siberian traps leads to the extinction of ~90% of marine. Seafloor communities that had been dominated by brachiopods, crinoids, rugose corals, and bryozoans are replaced by communities dominated by mollusks- including ammonites, bivalves, and gastropods (NM Museum of Nat. History).
275 Ma: Formation of the Glorietta (NM) & Coconino (AZ) Sandstones when much of the SW USA is a vast desert (NM Museum of Nat. History).
299-252 Ma: Earth’s Permian era (NM Museum of Nat. History).
300-175 Ma: Pangaea; Earth’s continents are locked as a single large landmass (Earth by Knoll).
The Pangaean supercontinent would have experienced shifting wind patterns that produced alternating wet and dry seasons that produced a mega-monsoon. During the N. hemisphere summer, low pressure over Euramerica would have brought extensive rains. Then, during the N. hemisphere winter, the circulation reversed so that Euramerica was dry and rain fell over Gondwana (NM Museum of Nat. History).
The collision of the continents that created Pangea took place along an E-W suture zone that extended from Central Asia to the W. USA. In that zone, Earth's crust crumpled and created many ancient mountain ranges. In the W. USA, one of these mountain ranges is called the Ancestral Rocky Mountains, even though today's Rockies are a much younger mountain range with little relationship to the Ancestral Rockies (NM Museum of Nat. History).
During the Permian Period, the last pieces of Pangea came together when Siberia collided with E. Europe, pushing up the Ural Mountains. Fully assembled, the vast supercontinent was a place of huge mountain ranges that towered over widespread tropical lowlands. Global sea level were relatively low as the last of the Late Paleozoic ice ages came to an end. After the collapse of the last ice sheets, the climate across Pangea began to dry. Vast inland deserts formed on the supercontinent, and hot, evaporating seaways became common (NM Museum of Nat. History).
323-299 Ma: Earth’s Pennsylvanian era; in the seas, algae and sponges build reefs that host abundant communities of crinoids and brachiopods. Nautiloids, ammonoids, sharks, and other fishes hunt in the open water. Swamps and jungles flourish as life continues to establish itself on land. The Pennsylvanian saw the origin of flying insects and plants that produced cones and seeds (NM Museum of Nat. History).
359-323 Ma: Earth’s Mississippian era; Earth is warm with moist climates and high sea levels. During the Late Mississippian, a major ice age took place in the S. hemisphere. The collision of Euramerica and Gondwana began to build the great supercontinent Pangea. Shallow Mississippian seafloors were often the locations of "crinoid meadows," vast underwater jungles of tentacled animals often called sea lilies. Crinoids reached their greatest diversity and abundance during the Mississippian, so the period is sometimes called the Age of Crinoids (NM Museum of Nat. History).
400 Ma: Evolution of ferns (NM Museum of Nat. History).
400 Ma: Dating of the oldest Lungfish (NM Museum of Nat. History).
419-359 Ma: Earth’s Devonian era; a new northern supercontinent, Euramerica, forms through the fusion of Laurentia with smaller landmasses that would eventually form parts of Eastern N. America and Europe. By the Late Devonian, another ice age begins, setting off a series of ice ages that lasted over 100 My into the beginning of the Permian period. Two extinctions in the Late Devonian led to the disappearance of many organisms, including placoderm fish. Two modern groups of fishes have their origins in the Devonian, ray-finned and lobe-finned fishes (NM Museum of Nat. History).
444-419 Ma: Earth’s Silurian era; the global climate changes from an Ordovician "icehouse" to a Silurian "greenhouse" with high sea levels. Marine life returned to high levels of diversity after the Late Ordovician extinctions. The first fishes with jaws evolve, including sharks, armored placoderms, and spiny acanthodians. Meanwhile, armored, jawless ostracoderm fishes fed on seafloors. Some fishes and mollusks began adapting to freshwater environments. On land, the first millipedes appear, as well as vascular plants with the ability to use their stems to carry water from their roots (NM Museum of Nat. History).
485-444 Ma: Earth’s Ordovician era; a diverse array of corals, bryozoans, brachiopods, mollusks, echinoids, graptolites, and jawless fish were found in Ordovician seas. During this time, multicellular life first came onto land, such as fungi and arthropods. Toward the end of the Ordovician, the climate cools, leading to an ice age with sheets of ice covering much of the S. hemisphere. The changing climate caused oceans to cool and sea levels to drop, resulting in the first of five major mass extinctions to occur on the planet (NM Museum of Nat. History).
539-485 Ma: Earth’s Cambrian era; warm seas teeming with life surround the barren land of isolated continents. Sea levels rose during this period, so by the end of the Cambrian there was very little dry land (NM Museum of Nat. History).
539-252 Ma: Earth’s Paleozoic era; (although life began in the sea long before) life expands out of the water and onto dry land. Most of the major kinds of plants and animals first evolve- the first clams, snails, corals, fishes, trees, insects, amphibians, and reptiles all appear in the Paleozoic. The modern continents also began to take shape, drifting toward their current locations (NM Museum of Nat. History).
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