Cycad

II. Nature is not a Museum The gymnosperms are often called ‘Living Fossils’, or are dismissed as being primitive. Gymnosperms are indeed ancient: originating in the carboniferous period (Bowe, Coat, & dePamphilis, 2000). They can be divided into four monophyletic groups: ginkophytes, gnetophytes, cycads, and the largest of the four (with more than 600 extant species), conifers. Conifers account for the greatest diversity amongst the gymnosperms. This diversity might pale in comparison to that of the angiosperms, but a group can have biological importance without being speciose. From an ecological point of view, gymnosperm success is in fact comparable to angiosperms, as gymnosperms are thriving in important niches across latitudes. This is…

The Daintree is one of the only habitats for the endangered Southern Cassowary. There are a lot of cassowaries in the Daintree. the Echidna has a wide distribution of its kind, including the tropical rainforest. the Echidna has strong, sharp spines over the body, and strong, short legs with long claws for digging, and a long sticky tongue for feeding. It feeds on ants, TERMITES and beetle larvae from the soil. Beetles are very important in the rainforest for decomposition.There are a large…

Scientists believe that one of the main foods that they ate was Conifers. From what many scientist have thought about, they most likely ate Conifers often because that was one particular plant that grew rapidly around the area they lived. Ginkgos, seed ferns, cycads, bennettitalean, ferns, club mosses, and horsetails were other possible choices of what the Sauropods may have eaten. Sauropods had to have large necks in order to reach the tip tops of the trees to eat. The largest one they believe…

Imagine finding fossils of an undiscovered sauropod while adventuring with some friends. Well that is what happened to Elmer S. Riggs. He discovered the first fossils of the Brachiosaurus. In 1900, Riggs found a partial skeleton of a Brachiosaurus in the rocks of the Brushy Basin Membrane of the Morrison Formation. The fossils were studied and information on this species was revealed. Brachiosaurs lived in the late Jurassic period, which was about 145 to 156 million years ago. The Jurassic…

Mt Tamborine Protection Strategy 1.0 INTRODUCTION Tamborine Mountain is a 28 square kilometre plateau (8 km long by 4 km wide) and is located in the Scenic Rim local government area of South East Queensland. It is approximately 600 meters above sea level and about 80km South of Brisbane. Mt Tamborine is a hot, moist and humid part of Australia with no extremes of temperatures. Trees and plants such as ferns, cycads and pines are found on Mt Tamborine. This mountain was called Mt Tamborine,…

5 million years ago. Fossils of this species are most commonly recovered in the uppermost Cretaceous deposits of western North America. The first specimen, found in 1887, was mistaken for an extinct species of bison. On further inspection, they realized it was a dinosaur. It was officially named “triceratops” by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1889. On average, adult triceratops could grow up to 30 feet long, 10 feet wide, and could weigh up to 6 tons. Its pubis bone pointed backward to support the…

and tied me up once again. The sunlight felt refreshing, and I shot a thankful look up at him. He saw and said, "You'll do us no good if you die before you're sold." I had pretty much already guessed that, but I was thankful nonetheless. I tried to tell him this but found out that instead, my throat was too dry to even croak. I smiled, and my lips cracked. I bit back my pain. He noticed that I was dehydrated, and pulled out a water skin. He slowly let me sip out of it. When he finished, I was…

footprints can be used to trace how dinosaurs traveled alone or in a herd. Body fossils may also show battle marks suggesting there were other dinosaurs to have confrontations with (Mitchell). Triceratops grew in eggs, some say that it’s unknown if parents took care of them from birth, but others suggest that some findings show only two or three in a proximity suggesting a family stayed together. Most likely Triceratops traveled in small families within a herd of others. They traveled at a…

causes of extinction itself, later noting that the benefits of de-extinction “will not compensate for the thousands of populations and species that have been lost due to human activities.” Ehrlich poses a valid point - by funneling time, money and resources into de-extinction, less attention is paid to other areas of conservation, and as a result, important issues are deprived of the resources they need. This potential mis-allocation of resources is especially worrying when one considers the…

rainfall. Furthermore, new species began to arise as a result of competition brought about by the limited resources on land. Consequently, seed-bearing plants emerged and thrived with the club mosses, which accounts for about half the plant species, and horsetails, both of which had dominated during the Carboniferous period (Viney 2008). The seed-bearing plants that initially came out were mostly the seed-bearing ferns like the Walchia, a genus of conifers. (Darrah 1926; Department of…