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| A view of the landscape in Garden of the Gods |
I hope you're enjoying your first weeks of summer, as well as reading Your Inner Fish.
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| If you think you've found a fossil, you need to dust it off... |
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| Fossil-hunting in Colorado |
Ok, it's time for your first summer reading assignment. You should complete this assignment after reading Chapter 1 of Your Inner Fish. If you'd like to read ahead, feel free. However, this assignment asks you to make specific reference to Chapter 1 in your post.
#1: What description of a paleontologist does Neil Shubin provide? Summarize the work in your own words and then give a direct quote from the text, citing the page #. If you could ask Dr. Shubin one question about his career, what would it be?
#2 Explain Shubin's analogy of the zoo. How can a walk through the zoo help us predict where to find fossils. Then, research and describe a fossil that is interested to you. Make sure you include how old it is and where it was found.
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This ammonite fossil is related to an octopus. |
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ReplyDelete#2: If you walk through the zoo, you can compare yourself to the animals. There are lots of animals with lots of differences, but we also have things in common. To predict where to find fossils, we must organize the animals into groups of what they share. The characteristics and species can tell you how old a fossil is. I researched the Montypythonoides riversleighensis. A 15-million-year-old snake fossil found in Indonesia. It's a seven-foot-long python with huge teeth. Later, it was found to not be exactly new, and was reclassified as Morelia riversleighensis.
ReplyDelete2: A walk through the zoo can help us predict where to find fossils. The zoo has many different species with many different traits. To predict where to locate fossils, we need to focus on what traits the different types of species share. Then, using the traits common to all species, we can identify groups of species with similar traits. I researched the fossil of Sciurumimus albersdoerferi (a feathered dinosaur). This fossil is 150 million years old, and was found in southern Germany. This fossil provides the first evidence of feathered theropod dinosaurs that are not closely related to birds.
ReplyDelete1# The description that Neil shubin provides of a paleontologist is that of a kind of detective using a variety of information from different fields and professions. For example he needs to know geology for identifying rocks capable of holding fossils and good sites as well. He will also need to know background on the animal information like we're it lived and what it ate, but if your a paleontologist discovering a new animal trying to figure out the origins of our bone structures your most likely the first to know the animal even excited and are likely to have no prior information on it. He also talks about the success rate of finding the right fossils and makes a joke about making a career out of pure luck. The quote I choose are the first 2 sentences of page five " using a few simple ideas,which ill talk about below,we can predict where important fossils might be found. Of course, we are not successful 100 percent of the time , but we strike it rich often enough to make things interesting" what I think he means by a few simple ideas I think he means all the things you need to know and prepare for everything I just mentioned. The question I have for Dr.shubin is would you ever considered digging at the site of a earth quake were there is shifted exposed ground if you thought there might be more evidence there to support your thesis ?
ReplyDelete#1: According to Neil Shubin a paleontologist is someone who studies the prehistoric life of fish evolution and tries to figure out when and how these changes occurred by putting them in chronological order. They do this by searching for certain fish fossils and looking for the age of the rock. Also, Paleontologist make plans but this doesn't always mean they will turn out like they thought. In this field paleontologist are always taking chances and hoping for the best. " In prepare for battle, I have found that planning is essential, but plans are useless"(Pg. 4) This captures the field of paleontology in a Nutshell according to Neil Shubin. If I could ask Dr.Shubin A question about his career I would ask why is it important to him to figure out the evolution of these fish?
ReplyDeleteNeil Shubin describes paleontology as the finding of fossils to answer question about how the species of today came about. Not only that, but the fossils found can give us extensive knowledge about many other things like the whether and earth itself. Thanks to the advanced technology of today paleontologist now have an easier time locating the perfect area to dig for fossils. Being a paleontologist is based on plans and on luck. "We make all kinds of plans to get us to promising fossil sites. Once we’re there, the entire field plan may be thrown out the window. Facts on the ground can change our best-laid plans" pg 4. My question to Dr. Shubin would be.. Would you take a life threatening expedition to uncover a fossil that would ultimately answer all the questions about how the transition from fish to land living animals came to be?
ReplyDelete#2In the zoo there are a lot of animals that will become fossils in the future. If we compare the fossils differences and similarities we have more of an idea of how the fossil got there or where it lived and how it was at the time. I researched a fossil of my favorite nature animal, which was a butterfly. The earliest known butterfly fossils are from the mid Eucene epoch, between 40-50 million years ago. It was amazing figuring out that even butterflies have fossils and a step procedure to actually know if they are real or not.
ReplyDelete#2 you can predict walking at the zoo you could find fossils is by the animals environment and diving the animals into smaller groups. its depending on the animals environment when it dies most likely the body and bones will there and since there in small groups there easier to find and gather. i found this cool fossil fuxhianhiid an arthropod, has primitive limbs under its head, a nervous system that extended past the head. The primitive creature may have used the limbs to push food into its mouth as it crept across the seafloor.
ReplyDelete#2)Neil Shubin's analogy of the zoo, to me, is very simple.Although it has a significant and complex meaning,his analogy just means that,besides all the obvious differences that all the animals in the Kingdom of Animalia have,we are all alike. And,in most cases,that's the deal with fossils.A fossil that I find very interesting is Chesapecten jeffersonius(scientific name),which is the fossil of a clam found in the Coastal Plain.It is the state fossil of the state of Virginia.It is the fossilized form of an extinct scallop,which lived in the early Pliocene(the period in the geologic timescale that extends from 5.332 million to 2.588 million years before present)epoch between four and five million years ago on Virginia's Coastal Plain.
ReplyDelete#2. Niel Shubin's anology of the zoo sorta helps show how all animals have similarities.Going to the zoo can help you predict what kind of fossils can be fine in different types of enviornments because the zoo shows every kind of species enviornment so you know where it can be found. A fossils i find interesting are the cetaceans.These fossils date back to the Oligocene period of 24-34 million years ago.
ReplyDeleteshubin's analogy of the zoo can be explain, because each animal is related to an ancestor of at least once creature in the past by their genetic coding. that why you can find similar bones of each animal that connect to their ancestor. the fossil that i am interested is the t-rex. It date back to 66 million years ago. T-rex lived in an area of the Earth that now makes up western North America.Tyrannosaurus rex lived in the late Cretaceous Period.
ReplyDelete#2. A walk through a zoo can help us predict where to look for fossils due to the animals characteristics. We can expect to find a zebra in the arctic tundra. Shubin's analogy of the zoo explains how animals can have similarities besides the obvious differences. The fossil I researched was Darwinius masillae, Ida, the "missing link" between higher primates (apes, humans) and lemurs. This lemur-like skeleton was a 47-million-year-old fossil found in Germany.
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