WHAT’S UP 11
July 2014
YOUR SAY: “No book can compare to the Mr Midnight series. It is very imaginative.” – Rui Fen, Pri 6, Punggol Primary
A
RAUL654
EQDOKTOR
From dinosaurs to reptiles...
 Tyrannosaurus rex and triceratops are well-known dinosaurs. You can
probably point them out in movies such as Jurassic Park and Land Before Time.
But, can you spot these extinct dinosaurs’ descendants as easily? Many people
think that crocodiles are dinosaur descendants. After all, they tend to be huge,
fierce and scary. Another common guess is the Komodo dragon  because of
its large size as well, and ominous name.
Actually, birds are the modern descendants of dinosaurs.
t the
ArtScience
Museum’s
current
exhibition,
“Dinosaurs: Dawn to
Extinction”, you can be
wowed by the fearsome
creatures that used to
stalk the earth long before
humans. Some of them,
like Tyrannosaurus rex,
remind us of lizards and
other reptiles. Indeed, the
name dinosaur comes from
the Greek words “deinos”
and “sauros”, which mean
“terrifying lizard”.
Yet, modern-day lizards
like the Komodo dragon
do not descend from
dinosaurs. According to
many paleontologists, the
only direct descendants of
dinosaurs that are still left on
Earth are birds.
One famous flying
creature during the dinosaur
age was the
pterodactyl . Was
the pterodactyl
the link between
dinosaurs and
birds? It is not as
simple as that.
Pterodactyls were
flying reptiles. They
were not the ancestors of
birds; nor were they even
dinosaurs.
You see, not all gigantic
creatures that
than a reptile.
lived millions
Likewise, a
of years ago
Tyrannosaurare classified
us rex has
as dinosaurs.
many things
Pterodactyls
in common
belonged to
with a pteroanother group
dactyl because
of animals called
they are both
pterosaurs.
archosaurs.
Plesiosaurs – the
But, each has
humongous
traits that
reptiles that
make it difpopulated the
ferent enough
Why is taxonomy important?
oceans around
from the other.
the same time as
Several traits
The dinosaur issue we are running into here is one of
dinosaurs lived –
separate a di“taxonomy”. Taxonomy is the science of describing,
are not dinosaurs
nosaur from a
identifying, naming and classifying things.
either.
pterosaur or a
Classification is important in biology because it
Dinosaurs,
plesiosaur, or
helps us to understand different organisms. When
pterosaurs, and
from today’s
scientists discover a strange new species, knowing
plesiosaurs were
crocodiles and
what family it belongs to helps them figure out what
different from
lizards.
kind of environment and food it needs to survive.
one another, but
The
they were all
simplest
Classification
related. They are
characteristic
all considered “archosaurs”.
separating dinosaurs from
As you would have learned
This is similar to the
the other archosaurs is that
in science, living things
relationship
dinosaurs had holes in their
are classified based on
between
hip sockets, where their
characteristics that define
monkeys
thigh bones connected to
them.
If
a
living
thing
has
a
and apes.
their hip bones. This enabled
spine, then it is a vertebrate.
Monkeys
them to stand erect on their
And, if a vertebrate lives
and apes
legs, similar to how humans
both in water and on land,
are different
can stand up straight.
then
it
may
be
either
an
enough to
Think about crocodiles
amphibian or a reptile.
be classified
and lizards. They crawl on
Going further, if it has skin
as two separate groups, but
their bellies with their legs
that has to be wetted every
they also have similarities
extending out to their sides.
now
and
then,
it
is
more
likethat make them both simians
For now, a good rule of
ly to be an amphibian rather
and primates.
thumb is that if it flew or
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VOCABULARY ominous (say “aw-me-nus”; adjective ) = as if something bad is going to happen.
lived under water, it was
probably not a dinosaur.
According to the current
classification, dinosaurs were
primarily land creatures.
This gets complicated,
though. There were some
dinosaurs that were able to
glide through the air, and
some dinosaurs could live on
both land and water.
Facts can change
New research also shows
that dinosaurs were not coldblooded like reptiles. They
were able to keep their body
temperatures quite steady
– though not as easily as
warm-blooded creatures like
mammals and birds.
With all these facts
emerging through research,
archosaur classification is
an ongoing project. Just as
finding out about the hole in
the hip joint led to one more
way to identify dinosaurs,
new information may lead to
re-grouping of all archosaurs.
As paleontologists make
fresh discoveries, some of
what we think of as facts
today will be proven wrong
and, hence, become fallacies.
It is this constant quest to
separate fact from fallacy
that keeps science alive.
– By ALISHA CHERIAN
SURE CLUB is a fun-filled
programme for you to learn
about information literacy. Visit
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