https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj Made with Discovery Education Articles "Dino Dung" and "Suddenly, Species" en-us 2018-03-09 19:35:02 UTC 2025-10-02 05:18:45 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/icons/Watchclock.png vstiefvater https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/240341733 Dinosaur dung, or coprolites, are very helpful to paleontologists. Why? Because you can use coprolites  to find out what dinosaurs ate, millions of years after they went extinct!

]]> 2018-03-09 19:42:37 UTC https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/240341733 vstiefvater https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/240352144 Paleontologists can find out what a dinosaur ate by cutting it open and looking inside. If the dinosaur ate plants, you could tell by looking at the cell structures, since plants have a very specific structure.

]]> 2018-03-09 20:06:47 UTC https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/240352144 vstiefvater https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/241588039 Sometimes, looking at coprolites can surprise scientists about the diets of dinos. For instance, scientists discovered that a large type of dinosaur living in what is now India ate grass, even though they thought no dinosaurs ate grass.]]> 2018-03-13 19:09:50 UTC https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/241588039 vstiefvater https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242121503 Scientists were surprised by the discovery of the grass not only because of dinosaur diets, but also because before this, scientists actually thought that grass didn't exist until after the dinosaurs died out! Surprise. Grass!]]> 2018-03-14 21:47:56 UTC https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242121503 vstiefvater https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242123928 The last and probably the most interesting part about grassy coprolites is that it also revealed that many plants that exist in other places existed in different parts of the world. This is because the animals ate them, and left coprolites in the places that they ate them in. For example, when mammoths roamed what is now the American Southwest, they ate many different plants that are no longer living in that area.]]> 2018-03-14 21:59:04 UTC https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242123928 vstiefvater https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242124871 One of the many paleontologists in the world, Stephen Jay, was caused by the life sized T-Rex model in the Natural History Museum of New York. He became with dinosaurs after that.]]> 2018-03-14 22:04:15 UTC https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242124871 vstiefvater https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242126045 Stephen Jay Gould believed that an organism would only evolve if the conditions were extremely extreme. He also thought that the surviving, evolved species would become new species.]]> 2018-03-14 22:11:17 UTC https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242126045 vstiefvater https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242126892 An example of Stephen Jay's theory would be, say, some birds. It rains a lot, and they have adapted to eat the small, soft seeds of the plants that grow easily in the environment. Then, the weather gets much hotter. The damp-weather plants die out, and the only plants left are the plants with big, hard seeds. The finches that can't eat the bigger seeds die, while any "mutated" finches with bigger beaks survive, carrying the mutation along to their offspring.]]> 2018-03-14 22:15:20 UTC https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242126892 vstiefvater https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242127604 According to Gould, evolution is completely random. If a drastic change happens, it is complete luck for a bird in the example to have a stronger beak, since this wouldn't have been an evolutionary advantage before the drastic changes, thus not giving a reason for birds to evolve that type of beak.]]> 2018-03-14 22:19:23 UTC https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242127604 vstiefvater https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242128246 Stephen Jay Gould wrote many books about his theories about evolution. He won many awards, such as the MacArthur genius award. He died of cancer in 2002, but his ideas about evolution will live on forever.]]> 2018-03-14 22:23:10 UTC https://padlet.com/vstiefvater/1myowuf5geyj/wish/242128246