Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Favorite Dinosaur Sites !!!

I love dinosaurs and these sites are amazing for information, pictures, videos and interactive activites.

1. Royal Tyrrell Museum
This is one of the places I've been wanting to see for a couple of months now !!! Looks like a amazing museum. Plus they have programs for children to teenagers.
http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/exhibits.htm

2. Discovery


Why this site? Clash of the Dinosaur 3D graphics of dinosaurs , amazing images of dinosaurs, cool information about dinosaurs, other videos and games. Great for all ages!!!

Dinosaur of the Month- Velociraptor mongoliensis

Dinosaur Name: Velociraptor mongoliensis
 
Order, Suborder, Family: Sauropsida, Dinosauria, Dromaeosauridae
 
Name Means: "swift predator," which refers to its ability to run after prey
 
Time Period: ate Cretaceous, 84-80 million years ago
 
Location: China, Mongolia, former Soviet Union

 
Length: up to 46 feet

Velociraptor mongoliensis was a feathered dinosaur due to a  forelimb fossil discovered in Mongolia  that showed quill knobs like those found in many modern birds.

The plumage of feahters may have been used for mating or to help regulate body temperature.The feathers might also have helped females protect their eggs.

 

 

 
 Velociraptor had hollow bones, tended nests of eggs, and probably behaved in similar ways as birds.
Despite their birdlike plumage these dinosaurs were not fliers.

What's interesting about this dinosaur is that it is prehaps the one of the more intelligent dinosaurs becasue of it large brain size in comparision to body size. Also this dinosaur walked upridht on two legs and reached speeds of 24 miles per hour.


 
"When they caught up to prey, these predators likely brought them down quickly with a long, 3.5-inch (9-centimeter) retractable claw on each foot and a mouth full of sharp teeth. Velociraptor is known to have preyed on herbivores such as Protoceratops. One famous fossil immortalized the two species locked in an ancient duel to the death." from http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/prehistoric/velociraptor-mongoliensis/' In 1971, a Velociraptor skeleton was found in a death struggle with a Protoceratops. Both skeletons were found intact.

The Velociraptor lived in a desert-like environment that had some streams, trees, and shrubs.Found in the Gobi Desert which is located in Mongolia and northern China.

As pack hunters, the Velociraptor may have had some social structure within their pack similar to other animal species that hunt in packs.

Like all dinosaurs, baby Velociraptors hatched from eggs. Fossilized skulls indicate that young Velociraptors had proportionally shorter snouts and bigger eyes than the adults. This indicates that the babies were fed and looked after by the adults for some period after hatching. (Contrast this to baby alligators, which look like tiny adults when they hatch, and receive no parental care.)

 
IF you want a good long detailed read about this dinosaur go to
 

Largest dinosaur graveyard found in Alberta - Canada - CBC News

Largest dinosaur graveyard found in Alberta - Canada - CBC News

Here the text from the article:

Scientists in Alberta have discovered the largest dinosaur bonebed ever documented — along with evidence of massive carnage — near Hilda, 50 kilometres north of Medicine Hat.
The find covers an area of about 2.3 square kilometres and contains thousands of bones from the plant-eating dinosaur Centrosaurus apertus, according to New Perspectives On Horned Dinosaurs, a book published this month by Indiana University Press.

Bonebeds containing centrosaurus, a type of horned dinosaur distantly related to the Triceratops, have been documented in Alberta since the early 1980s, providing the first evidence that some dinosaurs lived in herds.
However, officials at the Royal Tyrrell Museum say the Hilda site provides the first solid evidence that some horned dinosaur herds were much larger than previously thought, with numbers comfortably in the high hundreds to low thousands.

"Data from this mega bonebed provide pretty clear evidence that these and other dinosaurs were routinely wiped out by catastrophic tropical storms that flooded what was once a coastal lowland here in Alberta, 76 million years ago," said David Eberth, a senior research scientist at the museum, the lead author on the study and one of the book's three editors.

Rather than picturing the animals as drowning while crossing a river — a classic scenario that has been used to explain bonebed occurrences at many sites in Alberta — the research team interpreted the vast coastal landscape as being submerged during tropical storms or hurricanes.

With no high ground to escape to, most of the members of the herd drowned in the rising coastal waters. Carcasses were deposited in clumps across kilometres of ancient landscape as floodwaters receded.
"It's unlikely that these animals could tread water for very long, so the scale of the carnage must have been breathtaking," said Eberth. "The evidence suggests that after the flood, dinosaur scavengers trampled and smashed bones in their attempt to feast on the rotting remains."

The Hilda mega bonebed also helps explain why dinosaurs are so abundant in the badlands of Western Canada.
"Not only can we now explain why these kinds of horned dinosaurs are preserved in such great abundance here, but the tropical storm model also explains why there are so many kinds of dinosaurs preserved in the rocks at Dinosaur Provincial Park, the Drumheller area and even Grande Prairie, and why they are often found preserved so exquisitely," Eberth said.

According to the team, coastal plain floods like those that afflict modern Bangladesh occur on a geographic scale that is so vast that they often kill large varieties and numbers of the larger terrestrial animals, regardless of whether they lived solitary lives or spent their time in large herds.

They said that because of their size and the scale of the flooding, dinosaurs could not escape the coastal floodwaters and would have been killed in large numbers.

In contrast, fish, small reptiles, mammals and birds may have been able to escape such seasonal catastrophes by retreating to quiet water areas, the safety of trees and burrows or simply by flying away.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Replay Track of the Month -April

Been very busy with school so that the reason for the lack of posts at the moment.Hope you enjoy these picks!These are my top ten tracks that im loving right now:

1."Where I'm Going" -Cut Copy








2. "Same Jeans"- The View












3."Ballad of Hugo Chavez"- Arkells








4. "Architects" -Rise Against












5."Under Cover of Darkness"- The Strokes












6. "Mrs.Robinson"- The Lemonheads









7. "Boom Boom" - John Lee Hooker












8. "Wherever You Will Go" - The Calling












9. "Fall At Your Feet"- Crowded House












10."Torn"-Natalie Imbruglia