Overview
This weeks article should be related to the Cretaceous Period. Read the PowerPoint for the week to get topic ideas. The article can be no older than 5 years old. You will need to write a summary about the article (at least 1 or 2 paragraphs) in your own words and include how the article relates to the topic we are discussing in class. You will also need to respond to at least two other students summaries. The response should be college level appropriate. Responses should be a minimum of 25 words. two other summaries that need responds are attached:
1-An article published this past February revealed a fascinating new discovery regarding the evolution of a family of flowering plants during the Cretaceous Period. A professor from the University of Kansas identified a fossilized fruit dating back to the late Cretaceous. This particular fruit was determined to belong to a specific group of plants known as the lamiids, which include some of the most common types of flowering plants alive today.
Lamiid plants had never been recovered in fossilized form before the Cretace ous, and so were only thought to have evolved and flourished after the the K-Pg extinction event. The discovery of this impeccably preserved fossil indicates that these kinds of plants not only existed before the K-Pg extinction, but that they survived it and went on to evolve into the thousands of different species we know today.
Many of the staple crops that we humans depend on for food are lamiids. According to the article, these include "coffee, tomatoes, potatoes and mint." So, this discovery is a fascinating and important puzzle piece in our understanding of post-extinction biodiversity and the origin of many of our most valuable food crops.
2- The article in which I’m about to write relates to the most famous dinosaur from the Cretaceous period if not of all time, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. In recent years the T-Rex ;as well as with other dinosaurs, have been getting more physical changes in accordance to how science is evolving along with our understanding of prehistoric life so that we may accurately depict how these mysterious creatures might’ve looked. Changes such as: If the Dino in question had feathers, overlapping scales, or had forearms as long as their hind legs, etc… and the Tyrannosaurus of course is not excluded from having it’s factual image changed by scientist. Almost a century ago we thought the T-Rex walked up right, but now we know that isn’t the case, and in the early 2000s-scientist confirmed that some specimens of the T-Rex were covered in feathers, now as of recently in early 2023, scientist are now saying that the Tyrannosaurus Rex had lips!
We can all picture the massive head of a T-rex and the first image we probably envision is how we can see some large intimating sharp teeth exposed from its mouth without it even needing to be opened like an alligator, but nope, now some scientist beg to differ. The scientist in the article made it their mission to prove that the T-Rex had lips, and they did it by comparing the enamel of modern crocodilians (Who have none) to the enamel of modern animals who actually have lips. They were able to conclude that the enamel of a T-Rex was thick unlike crocodiles who have thin ones: The T-Rex enamel was thick in comparison to modern day animals who do have physical lips; therefore, which leads more scientist to suggest that the Tyrannosaurus Rex had nice big lips to cover their banana shaped teeth.