What can we learn from dinosaurs about Climate Change? A great deal, it turns out. By studying how climate changes, bit and small, affected prehistoric life throughout the history of the Earth, scientists can better understand how what we do to our environment, along with the natural changes that occur, will affect the way we live now and in the future.
Leonardo News and Events
During the study of Leonardo, the question that most people would ask was, "How did Leonardo die?" Their next question was usually, "How did he turn into a mummy?" This was a real head-scratcher for the science team and often led to rather spirited debates. However, scientist Dave Eberth from the Royal Tyrell Museum near Calgary in Canada had an interesting theory that has become accepted by most of the science team as to both the cause of Leo's death and why he was able to become a mummy. Dr. Eberth has found evidence that a big climate event, a giant hurricane, traveled up the inner seaway that separated eastern and western North America, and flooded hundreds of miles of coastal plains. This was the flat area along the coast where Leo and many thousands of other dinosaurs lived. Nearly all the big dinosaurs in these coastal areas would have drowned in a matter of hours. The discussion of these giant storm events, caused by local, temporary changes in climate that probably happened every few hundred years, made a number of the research team look into how climate change affected the dinosaurs and how it still affects us today. To help us better understand these events, we turned to experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and additional scientists at NASA. NOAA has partnered with Dinosaur Apocalypse to present information, resources and teaching tools about Climate Change and how it has occurred throughout more than 4 billion years of Earth's history. Visit us at www.dinosaurapocalypse.org for lots of great information and resources for kids, parents and educators.
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