Dinosaur Empire! (Earth Before Us #1): Journey through the Mesozoic Era
How is this possible Welcome to the Time Tunnel which transports us through time and space Let's just call it Science Magic Nope we are now in THE LEARNING CENTER a nice relaxing spot perfect for learning I thought I was supposed to learn about dinosaurs Are we still in the recycling bin Don't worry we'll come back to that I brought you here to learn the all important BASICS OF EVOLUTION EVOLUTION is COOL
As for evolution it's what happens when a group of organisms changes to better survive in the environment around it and the ecological niche it occupies Sorry maybe we should define some terms first Where it lives what it eats An ecological niche is the place a creature has in an environment Another important term is common ancestor which is the creature from which multiple other kinds of creatures evolved and what eats it The ancestor they have in common And as for evolution it's a process that usually happens very very slowly over millions of years and is happening all the time It doesn't happen in animals that are already born It happens through small changes in the DNA of an organism's babies These changes are called mutations ULTIMATE IT IS I YOUR BEAUTIFUL CHILD DANG THAT'S LONG LONG LONGER GOOD BOY 1 MILLION YEARS A dog can't suddenly evolve wings if it wants to Sometimes a mutation helps an organism survive longer than its relatives Which means it can have more babies than the nonmutated organisms MY BABIES ARE THE BEST AT BEING ALIVE THE STRIPES CONFUSE PREDATORS and pass down its mutation to those babies
And lo and behold several million years later they're a whole new species STRIPE HORSE ZEBRAS There are some interesting trends in evolution like convergent evolution Which is what it's called when unrelated animals have features in common or look a lot like each other HEDGEHOG ECHIDNA NOT RELATED Dolphins and sharks for example look very much alike and it can be hard to tell them apart sometimes They look similar because they both live in the same niche Many large ocean predators have a shape like this COMMON DOLPHIN TUNA ORCA BOTTLE NOSE TIGER DOLPHIN SHARK SWORDFISH PADDLEFISH even though one is a mammal and one is a fish They are both large ocean predators and this body shape makes them faster and therefore better at catching prey BULLSHARK BELUGA Because this is where I keep my whiteboard of course Okay this is all But why did we travel useful stuff to through time and space know for passing Ito talk about this stuff my quiz or whatever Couldn't you have told me all this in your living room Plus this is just the first stop on our journey Knowing about how evolution works will make it easier to understand the creatures we're about to meet where they came from why they look the way they do and where they went Creatures Are We going to a zoo or something Yes Or something
COME We have much to learn We're headed 205 million years in the past to THE LATE TRIASSIC
