Rolling onward

Some dinosaurs know how things roll.

Widely grinning, confidently going forward despite dragging their baggage behind them.

That heavy load carried and guarded like a valuable treasure into their new environment and an unknown future.

After all, remnants of the past may hold solutions as well as mysteries for the future.

Dinosaurs equal big things. 

Whimsical New Year’s card, 1922. (USPD/Commons.wikimedia.org)

This is one of my favorite vintage New Year’s cards. Created in 1922 by Charles Knight when the American Museum of Natural History was moving their dinosaur exhibit to new larger building.

Wonder if Knight would smile to see it’s somehow relevant in ways he never planned: a timelessness suggested if considering modern thoughts, attitudes, and events. Not just climate.

Anyway, roll on grinning like these monster wise guy: Boldly, merrily,  prepared, and outfitted to manage whatever waits in a new year.

Be the dinosaur

(and, as some would say, “adapt and diet”)

Phil, the Philosopher Mouse of the Hedge

Interesting trivia about the polar dinosaurs of Alaska’s North Slope, Alaska’s Colville River area, and those in Denali National Park.

1. Paleontologists, now able to reach areas previously covered by glaciers and ice, are surprised of the number of dinosaur species lived there and how large – and small – many of them were.
2. That now frozen land was once covered by forests and lots of plants as the climate was warmer providing the herbivore dinosaurs plenty of food despite short days. One hypothesis suggests the herbivores ate rotten wood in winter like beetles and bugs do.
3. Recently discovery of a burrow with fossilized dinosaurs suggest some species may have actually dug burrows and perhaps hibernated during polar winter
4. Dressed for success: Dinosaurs covered with heavy fluffy feathers, not scales!
5. DNA evidence indicates the Alaska polar dinosaurs are closely related to China’s arctic dinosaurs…(Hmmm, when headed out to explore or vacation, watch the land bridge, tectonic plate shifts, and continental drifts. If you get stuck and trapped there, you might get called names like “indigenous” if not careful.)
6. Dinosaurs were the dominant species for a long time. They evolved and adapted. Surely humans can do the same.   

Want more?

• “Herd structure in late Cretaceous polar dinosaurs: Denali…”   Interesting Research article, Geoscience World.  Discovery of a “herd living in an ancient high-latitude continental ecosystem, provides insight into the herd structure and behavior of northern polar dinosaurs and perspective on populations of large-bodied herbivores in an Arctic greenhouse world.” “Societal concerns abound regarding biotic responses to a warming Arctic. The Cretaceous of Alaska records a vast ancient Arctic continental ecosystem that can offer constructive insights into how biota might respond to a warm polar climate…”
• “Scientists explore dinosaur ‘coliseum’ in Denali National Park” .Univ. of Alaska
• “Alaskan Dinosaurs” NOVA/PBS video. (See the huge feathered dinosaurs and what the warmer forested environment during that era on Alaska’s North Slope might have looked like.)
• “Tiny ‘ice mouse’ survive Arctic in age of dinosaurs”. CSU Boulder article
• “The polar dinosaurs revealing ancient secrets” BBC. (Nice article with area pictures and artists renderings …I find the “Therizinosaurus – a colossal, slow-moving herbivore with creepy long “scythe” fingers” definitely creepy.)

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

Happy New Year!

 

 

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