Sep 2016 L'il Buckaroos

L'IL BUCKAROOS

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This month's Wild Heart Mustangs™
L'il Buckaroos is all about

DINOSAURS

Today's L'il Buckaroos topic is the dinosaurs who became extinct thousands of years ago.

"What does extinct mean?" you say?

"Extinct" is the disappearance of living creatures (plants, animals, fish, etc.) from the earth. Sometimes just one critter at a time, sometimes entire families and clans of critters, like the dinosaurs. All kinds of things can push a creature off the planet. Quickly or gradually, they become hungry, hunted, hounded, and homeless. They die. No more of that creature is born to carry on the family name. Sometimes it's a natural process and sometimes (unfortunately) it's because their fellow creatures (like us humans) kill them or their homes or their food sources.

Dinosaurs are a well-known group of extinct creatures, so we're going to use them as an example today.

ALL ABOUT DINOSAURS

Everybody knows about dinosaurs, right? You see statues of them in museums and pictures in books. They're in movies, cartoons, coloring books, you name it. But have you ever actually met one? Say, on the playground or in the zoo, or nibbling on the trees in your own back yard? No, you haven't.

And why is that?

You don't see live dinosaurs because they're EXTINCT now. Gone, gone, gone.

What happened to the dinosaurs?

Here's the story. Read along with Mr. Bookworm...

Once upon a time, all kinds of animals walked the earth. Big ones, little ones. Animals that flew, animals that crawled, animals that swam. Thousands of years later, they're gone. Well, some prehistoric birds and insects did develope into some of the flying, crawling critters we still see today. Like cockroaches, for example. And termites.

I know, I know, they kind of creep me out too. But anyway, about the dinosaurs...

In prehistoric times, the planet earth was different in many ways from the way it is now. The air, water, land, climate, geology, geography, plant life and more combined to make it a good home for the strange-looking creatures we call dinosaurs. Some were huge, and some were the size of a chicken. They shared the earth with primitive amphibians, reptiles, birds, insects, fish, and eventually mammals called primates who evolved into human beings.

Once upon a time, dinosaurs ruled the earth. Today, there are none. But why?

According to the Paleontologists...

Paleontologists are scientists who study fossils - the remains of prehistoric creatures. Fossils can be bones, teeth, footprints, feces (aka "poop") - things that turned into (or left an imprint on) minerals or rocks over hundreds and thousands and millions years.

The first known discovery of dinosaur bones was in Europe in the 1700's. In the 1800's, an 11-year-old girl named Mary Anning found fossil bones near her home in England. More fossil footprints and bones were found in England and America. In the 1900's dinosaur fossils were found in Africa, and dinosaur nests and eggs were found in China. Since then, evidence of dinosaurs has been found on every continent of the world.

Mary Anning grew up to be a paleontologist even though many people at that time believed women were not able to understand, teach, or perform any kind of scientific endeavor.

Her family was poor but since finding the first bones, she remained curious, studied them faithfully, and contributed a lot to the understanding of fossils.

Even though paleontologists have been studying and researching and arguing about it for some 200 years, they have different theories about what caused dinosaurs to disappear from the earth.

The most common explanations given are:

> A big meteorite crashed into Earth and changed climactic conditions so dramatically that dinosaurs could not survive.

> The ash and gas spewing from erupting volcanoes suffocated the dinosaurs.

> Diseases killed the dinosaurs.

> The dinosaurs starved to death because of disruptions to their food supplies.

Perhaps all four of those problems wiped out the dinosaurs. Meteorites, volcanoes and diseases could directly or indirectly kill them or their food supplies. Different types of dinosaurs ate different types of foods, from lizards and turtles to twigs and leaves, but not all dinosaurs had the same kind of teeth. They needed long, sharp teeth to tear through meat, so if they had broad, flat teeth to chomp on plants, they were likely to go hungry after the twigs and leaves they needed to eat.