Jennifer Allen
Bio
Hello. I like writing about interesting and unique facts about science and history like four-tusked Mastodons and droughts from the Bronze Age. Check out my website at historyscorner.weebly.com
Stories (14)
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The Gatherers
Across the continents, various prehistoric peoples generally fall into two different categories. There are the hunters and there are the gatherers. They usually traveled together, but each contributed differently to the journey. The hunters did all of the hunting and brought home the meat. The gatherers had a different task and gathered the greens. Both of these groups were found in Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, but Neanderthals ate more meat than greens. The Homo Sapiens gathered more greens. Some studies suggest that eating more meat than greens might have affected the Neanderthals in the long run. They both survived for many generations. The homo sapiens were also divided into two groups, but studies show that the balance between greens and meat helped them survive.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
Return of the Thunder Lizard
Until the 1850s, only nine known dinosaurs were found and identified as prehistoric versions of the reptiles. The bones found during this time were mixed with no clear definition of specific species. The first whole dinosaur was found by a man named Foulke who worked for Edward Cope in 1858. They were digging in the Marl Pits in New Jersey and found a whole Hadrosaurus. Unknown to Cope, two men who were working for him were also collecting specimens and selling them to Yale’s Peabody Natural Museum system. Charles Marsh of the Peabody Natural Museum was miserly in sharing information about his finds. This beginning of Paleontology also started the Bone Wars and a race to collect as many new specimens as possible. It also created a problem because no one was comparing notes to see if specific species could be identified. It was almost a decade before the classification system was set in place for dinosaurs.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
Recycling along the Subduction Zone!
Looking out over flat the prairie or a savannah, one might not realize that the earth beneath is moving but it actually is. The land is always moving. Supercontinents have formed over the last billion years and broken apart. Tectonic plates have moved around. Some have been lifted like the Colorado plateau and others were shoved under like the subduction zones along the coast. It’s at these subduction zones that the magic happens, earth recycles the seawater and makes diamonds.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
Dinosaurs vs Mammals
A long time ago, the continents came together to form one large supercontinent called Pangea. It was not the first time these continents came together, but it is the first time that life as we know it was formed and grew. Almost all categories of animal life lived on the land of Pangea or swam around the one ocean of Panthalassa. They were just in different forms and had many more variations then what we see today. It was a much different world then we have now with no polar caps or large mountain ranges. There was one central mountain range but the only thing that separated the land masses was the environment. The atmosphere had almost 20% more carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures. There were vast jungles in some areas and milder conifer forests in others, but it was more about where the humidity and moisture were. There were also animals similar to what we have to today but in different sizes. Let me explain…
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
Dinosaurs of Antarctica
Standing on the ice of Antarctica, it is hard to imagine a land full of dinosaurs. Almost 200 million years ago, the land was a lot different. There were no polar caps as we know them, but there were still periods of low light in the winter months. It was colder than the sections of Pangea near the Equator, but not covered in ice and snow as we see it today. There was most lush vegetation but mostly near the shores. It was definitely not a warm jungle, but more like Easter Island with dinosaurs. The weather was mild, but cooler in the interior regions. The oldest dinosaur bones were found in the inner mountain range.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
Dinosaur Islands of Europe
When Pangea started to break up, we lost more than just a couple of continents. The Panthalassa was a gigantic ocean and the Tethys was a bay of the supercontinent Pangea. When Pangea began to break up, the Tethys became a sea dividing the next two continents of Gondwana and Laurasia between 185 and 125 MA. These two continents moved away from each other and smaller pieces of Pangea have broken apart. The central mountains on Pangea connected Africa, Europe, and the eastern side of North America. During this time, these mountains began separating. It was essentially the Appalachian mountains which today run from Alabama up the eastern seaboard into Canada. Africa began to drift away and part of this mountain range was pulled apart. It also started the beginning of the Atlantic Ocean.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
What happened to the Lost Continents?
Recent discoveries on the lost continent of Zealandia have made people begin to wonder if there are more lost continents out there. By dating the Zircons found in Zealandia, there is evidence to suggest that this was a part of the supercontinent Rodina long before Pangea. It aged over 1 billion years ago when Rodina was formed as a supercontinent. Using that as a guide, they recently measured the zircons on the mass under Mauritania and found it was dated earlier than that. Could Mauritania have been part of a supercontinent before the supercontinents that we know of? It is much older even though it sank under the sea after Zealandia did.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
Supercontinents, where are we going next?
With all this talk about the magnetic poles moving, it is easy to speculate about what the earth is doing. Magnetic shifts have occurred before. They are usually gradual, over time, giving nature a chance to get used to the changes. It would be interesting to speculate about the earth getting ready for another supercontinent. The continents are moving only a few centimeters a year so it will take time, but this has happened before. Whether it is caused by the magnetic poles moving is still up for debate, but this does give us a reason to look into the past and see where we have been.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
The case for a new dinosaur tree
Last year was a great year for dinosaur finds. Finding an actual piece of the asteroid in amber that wiped out the dinosaurs was just one of them! Something that may have gone unnoticed was the recent debate on re-classifying dinosaurs. Since writing our article on bringing back the Brontosaurus, some new things have been introduced into the dinosaur which may need to be reclassified. There was only a certain class of dinosaurs that had feathers. There was a distinction between warm-blooded and cold-blooded dinosaurs. They even found that herbivores may have been carnivores at one time.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
Island of Blue Lava
Across the Pacific ocean, on an island that raises some of the best coffee, there is another mysterious phenomenon that has captured imaginations…a blue lava volcano. Kawah volcano is actually part of a vast caldera that has been active for over 300,000 years. The mother volcano of the system, old Ijen, formed as a stratovolcano which erupted over 10 miles at that time. Since then, several off shoots from the main stratovolcano have been active. Kawah is just one of those active spots surrounding the caldera and has a vast amount of sulfur. It’s from this sulfur that the magic happens.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
What happened to the Bronze Age?
Recently, I came across a great article about the findings of an ancient lake which showed a great drought during the end of the Bronze Age. It is an event which has many people discussing what really did happen to bring that age to an end. Some suggested the emergence of a great sea peoples, some say it was volcanoes and earthquakes. It could have been the lack of materials to build any more. A shipwreck was also discovered recently showing a cargo full of tin necessary for the bronze age. Geologically the composition showed that it came from a long way away and far from the Mycenean city states. This suggests that they were running out of materials and couldn’t sustain their civilization.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in Earth
Four tusked Elephants?
Technically, there are three different families in the Proboscidae order. So where did that come from and why should you care? There have been some great finds this last year in the prehistoric animal world from South American Mastodon families to the more recent Mississipian American Lion. These and other findings are adding to our database of Ice Age Animal DNA and allow us to find their relationship to our current animal species. This article is about the elephant cousins of the prehistoric age.
By Jennifer Allen3 years ago in FYI
