muntingtala

Sorry that I did not update last week but we had camp so I got delayed!

But here it is now!

Fossils played a very important role in the work of paleontologists (The kind of scientist that studies fossils). Did you know that they helped people realize that ancient mythical creatures called “dragons” turned out to be “dinosaurs”? The discovery of these preserved stones has led to a big change in how people thought about those extinct creatures that lived long ago on earth. Some of these creatures that lived long ago include ammonites and dinosaurs; the most fearsome of all is the Tyrannosaurus Rex (a species of dinosaurs). You may have seen it in Jurassic Park tearing up a person and eating it.

Have you ever wondered how fossils form? First let’s start with the cycle of fossils. Let’s say an ammonite dies in the sea and its shell falls to the ground. After some time it gets covered by sand, rock and other things that can be turned into mud (in time!). Then it turns really hard and gets covered by more mud and other things that fall into the sea. After millions and millions of years the shell will wear out or dissolve (the insides have decayed already…) but an imprint of the ammonite is still there. Coal was made this way by old and ancient swamps where dead animals and plants got covered by layers of rocks and mud and pressure was building up over the years and then the old swamps turned into coal. But that’s another story…

What kinds of animals are trapped in these amazing little rocks? Like I said, ammonites which are shell-living creatures or mollusks are quite interesting. In some parts of medieval Europe ammonites were thought to be petrified coiled snakes and were also called two other names, snakestones or serpentstones and were thought to have magic healing powers. Another example is the trilobite. Trilobites are a kind of bug type creature with an ovular body and lots of legs. Trilobites are named so because their body is like in three parts, tri means three. Trilobites are quite the most common mostly in books and movies as a little bug thing crawling about. In the beginning of the movie “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” a trilobite was crawling around a big crevice filled with lava at the bottom (I think). Lastly, dinosaurs are the incredible reptilian creatures that have lived for millions of years. Most fossils of dinosaurs you can find are now in museums around the world as bones (there can be replicas also). They got dug up or got to the surface by erosion.

If you are trying to find a fossil on your own, try the beach, there are a lot of limestones (a limestone is a rock where some fossils are imprinted the most) in the beach. If you find one, crack it open with a hammer and chisel. If not, keep looking or buy one from a fossil and gemstone shop. The world is full of these interesting rocks and you can examine them in museums up close! If you are interested why not try being a paleontologist yourself. Fossils may be hundreds of years old and sometimes fragile and even hard to find, but even so fossils are the most interesting things discovered that tells us about the history of creatures that lived long ago. The world is full of these bones and plants implanted on these rocks so even maybe if you have a coal rock take a closer look at it, who knows, maybe there could be one of those creatures that lived long ago. Fossils are amazing and are truly the clues to the past.

This is what an ammonite would look like.

This is the fossil of an ammonite.

This is what a Tyrannosaurus Rex might look like.

These are the bones of a T-Rex called Sue. It is the famous one.

This is a fossil of a trilobite.

This is limestone; you can find a large kind of cliff in the beach made of limestone.

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limestone

This is the link for limestone.

http://dsc.discovery.com/dinosaurs/

This is the link for dinosaurs.

http://www.trilobite.com/

This is the link for trilobites.

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/prehistoric/ammonites/

This is the link for ammonites.

Hello guys, back on track here is another essay!

Vitamins and Minerals for a Healthy Life

Foods contain vitamins and minerals which can make a child’s growth steady, and let you from getting various problems like having poor eyesight or being the oldest but shortest in class. (You can get bullied because you look like a six year old!) When I myself go to McDonalds, I wonder what kind of nutrients are in what I eat? When I bit into the burger I wondered if any good thing was in there. So I researched. But, the good news is, we only need to eat the proper food just to keep these health problems away.

First let’s talk about vitamins. Vitamin A is quite common in yellow vegetables like carrot which can improve your eyesight in the light and the dark. Other examples include squash and pumpkin alike and may also help, if your eye is going bad, eat lots of these. Vitamin D in milk can help your bones grow and so does Calcium*. (*This can also be found in milk) Vitamin C is inside juicy fruits like oranges and grapes. Ones that soaked up lots of sunshine will be the best to keep you healthy.

Minerals are pretty much the same thing but have different ways of helping your body. Calcium is common in dairy products. Calcium makes strong teeth to help your eating and strong bones for playing sports. Iron is another important mineral that helps your red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body since it helps the hemoglobin which is the part of the blood cell that carries oxygen (it’s like an oxygen pouch). Iron can be found mostly in red meat, tuna and potatoes with skin. Potassium keeps your muscles intact and keeps your whole nervous system okay. It regulates your body‘s water. Quite a lot of food are rich in potassium, like bananas, broccoli, and juicy fruits like oranges. Lastly Zinc, it helps your immune system and lets you grow healthy. These are the foods that are rich in zinc: beef, pork, lamb, and beans.

If you don’t have these vitamins and minerals regularly it could lead to poor health. Like not enough calcium can lead to weak bones and you can’t walk. Not having enough vitamins can lead to an unhealthy life. Not seeing well, the water inside your body is too much – these are real bad so you need to eat these important vitamins and minerals to lead a healthy life.

So vitamins and minerals for a healthy life is important, when you eat the proper food, maybe next year you could be taller than your friends or get healthier to do a sport! This is part of growing up into a healthy adult instead of an unhealthy one. Share these with friends and together you will reach your full potential and be healthy.

Hey, sorry for not posting for a long time but I have been busy! :p Check this out!

Global Warming Should be Stopped

Global warming should be stopped because the ozone layer is getting holes in most areas. Even the North Pole is known to be cold but the ice and glaciers are melting and some species like polar bears up north are struggling to live. If we do not do this soon they could be extinct as well as life disappearing from earth one by one.

First, global warming is taking away bits of the ozone layer where the holes letting in some UV Rays (ultraviolet rays) which are harmful to our skin, the UV-B ones especially. This kind of ultraviolet ray can go through clouds as if they were paper. Maybe even more can leak through when the whole ozone layer is pocked with holes.

Second, some species are in danger because of Global warming melting their habitats and they have no place to live. Polar bears are one such specie, they are stuck on small icebergs and these icebergs melt so polar bears can’t live on them. So the cycle begins and more humans, more pollution and we end up with endangered animals. For example like some birds that live by the shore, more humans use oil which leads to more oil spills, and then the birds will lose their food and they can get stuck in the oil spill when diving.

Third, pollution goes everywhere from the air to the sea and oil spills and car gasoline are too much for us to handle. Pollution gets worse since there are more of us nowadays.  A solution to this could be by creating more solid oil cans and making eco cars much cheaper.

We can make the world which we care and love for and we can do some simple things to help out, here is a list:

•  Turn off the light when you are done doing something
• When you leave the house check if the electrical appliances are off
• Bike more often than using the car

Or you could shout out some ideas that stop polluting rivers and the air and to stop the ozone layer from getting more holes throughout the atmosphere. When you bike, the less air is polluted in your area, when you turn off the light, electricity is saved. So doing such things even small can turn out as a very big one. Doing these could actually work so good maybe the polar bears could be sleeping contentedly on a glacier dreaming that you saved the world from global warming! When you do this one part, the world could already be starting to get cleaned up. So this is what I think would be nice to stop global warming ,because it is a complicated problem but we can do simple things to solve it step by step.