|
 |
  |
            
LATEST FROM BLOMBOS
| |
Palaeonotes for parents and teachers
PUZZLE 1: Dotty Dino
These notes are designed to give additional information to adults so they can talk about the animals in the puzzles with their young charges. Specific attention has been paid to providing answers for questions that children are likely to ask, as well as ideas for conversations with youngsters that prompt them to use their imaginations and develop their powers of comparison and deduction. Interesting information that is not generally known is also given in the form of SPECIAL NOTES. SPECIAL NOTE: Dinosaurs were LAND ANIMALS only. The animals (not fish) swimming in the sea at the same time as the dinosaurs, were NOT dinosaurs. They were sea-living REPTILES. The creatures flying around in the air at the time of the dinosaurs - the Pterodactyls (Ter-o-dak-tills) and other pterosaurs (Ter-o-sores) - were NOT dinosaurs. They were flying reptiles. The dinosaurs were a special group of land-living animals only. They were also NOT reptiles in the way that modern snakes and lizards are reptiles. They belong in a special group called the ARCHOSAURS (Ark-o-sores), because they worked differently from true reptiles. All dinosaurs - both the kind that walked on four legs and the kind that walked on two - kept their tails UP OFF THE GROUND when they moved. They had to, because their tails behind them balanced their heads and necks in front. If they had tried to drag their tails on the ground, they would have tipped over backwards. Massospondylus was a prosauropod, which means "Before the Lizard-Foot". It was one of the early dinosaurs of the late Triassic/early Jurassic periods. Its name was created in 1854 by the famous Sir Richard Owen of the British Museum in London - the same man who came up with the word 'Dinosaur' - and was based on a few vertebrae (back-bones) that had been sent to England from South Africa. A full-grown Massospondylus could grow up to 6 m (about 20 feet) long from snout to tail-tip, so it was not a giant by any means (and certainly could not compare in size with its later giant Jurassic cousins like Diplodocus (Dip-lod-o-kuss) and Brachiosaurus (Brak-ee-o-saw-russ). It had back legs that were longer than its front legs, and a surprisingly small head for its body with peg-like teeth that could not chew. In order to grind up the plant material it ate, therefore, it swallowed small stones and pebbles (like the grit pecked up and swallowed by birds for the same reason), which mashed up the food inside its stomach. Such stones are called gastroliths (literally "stomach-stones"). Massospondylus laid eggs that were not very much larger than chicken eggs. Fossilised Massospondylus eggs in the museum of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research at Wits University in Johannesburg are the oldest dinosaur eggs ever found. The dinosaur's front feet each had a 'thumb' with a large, curved claw, which was not just used for grasping. What do you think Massospondylus could do with its claws? What would you do with big nails on your front thumbs if you walked on four legs? The claws would have made excellent weapons (self-defence), and would also have been very useful for scraping roots or plants out of the ground. An interesting thing about Massospondylus is the size of its eyes: they took up almost a third of its skull. Can you think of anything alive today with really big eyes? There's owls, of course, and bush-babies or nagapies (nach-a-peeze, with a gutteral "ch"). What do these creatures have in common? They are nocturnal: they search for food and eat at night, so their eyes have to be big enough to take in and use as much as possible of the available light. Does this mean Massospondylus was a nocturnal dinosaur? Probably.
PUZZLE 2: Help the Hungry Animal Larry is a mammal-like reptile, which was an animal that was both mammal and reptile AT THE SAME TIME. This is quite hard to understand, but what it means is that part of these animals' bodies worked like mammals and part like reptiles. Mammal-like reptiles were a branch off the reptile line that started developing mammal characteristics, and that actually - some 60 million years later - gave rise to true mammals. They are therefore very important scientifically. Grasping the idea of a mammal-like reptile means understanding the difference between MAMMALS and REPTILES.
Mammals:
Reptiles:
SPECIAL NOTE: That is why snakes are so vulnerable when they are eating; they cannot move, because they cannot breathe. If a person or animal surprises a snake when it is eating, it needs to get away. It cannot wait until the food it is busy squeezing down its gullet goes all the way past its windpipe at the back of its throat, so it regurgitates (throws up) the food. This clears the windpipe, and the snake can 'run' away to safety. There are snakes in Africa that can stop breathing for up to half an hour until their food passes their windpipes. Larry is not just a mammal-like reptile, but a member of a special family of mammal-like reptiles. They did not have teeth. Instead, they had hard horny beaks. Only two of their teeth remained - the canines, which grew down beside their mouths like little tusks. This gave them their scientific name of DICYNODONTS (Dy-sy-no-donts), which literally means “Two Dog-Teeth”. Do you know of any animals today that have beaks like this? Yes: tortoises and turtles. NOTE - this does NOT mean tortoises and turtles 'come from' Larry or Lystrosaurs; they don't. It just means they have the same sort of mouthparts, and that their particular mouthpart design is very successful and versatile. Tortoises are herbivores; turtles are both herbivorous and carnivorous. So what did Larry eat? He was a plant-eater, who lived near the edges of rivers and probably waded into the shallow water. Larry's feet were ideal for scraping in the mud. His beak was perfect for slicing off plants. He was a herbivore, although he probably would not have objected to a few worms here and there that got mixed up with the plants he rooted for. The plant in the picture is a prehistoric kind called a 'horsetail', which grew beside water. There are still some surviving members of the family: one type can be found in Europe, and there are also some relatives in South Africa.
Lystrosaurus came towards the end of the mammal-like reptiles, and
lived in South Africa just before the first dinosaurs, about 230 million years ago(during the period called the Triassic).
CONTACT BRETT HILTON-BARBER primeorigins.co.za is an iafrica.com Private Label site | |
- TIME WORLD
- South Africa's fabulous fossils - Contact Us - Palaeofacts for younger Palaeofans - Palaeofun for Palaeofans - Palaeonotes for parents and teachers - Palaeoinfo for Palaeofans 
 Buy John Gurche posters online
 Click here for details of Rock Art tours
 Visit the Prime Origins Rock Art site
  WORLD SUMMIT LAUNCH FOR CRADLE OF HUMANKIND OFFICIAL FIELD GUIDE[Full Story]SURPRISE MUSEUM FIND LINKS MRS PLES SKULL TO REST OF BODY[Full Story]SEVEN MILLION YEAR OLD CHAD SKULL FORCES RETHINK ON HUMAN ORIGINS[Full Story]
 [ Click Here ] |
