King of Gore

King of Gore

About 90 million years ago, meat-eating dinosaurs began undergoing big changes. They were adapting to conditions in what is now the western United States. Best known among them would be the fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex, but some of its ancestors also would gone on a crazy rampage through the countryside. Consider Lythronax Argestes a new found addition to the family, it’s the earliest. And its Greek name says it all: Gore King of the Southwest.



A fossil was discovered in Utah and is declared related to the T-rex. Researchers at the Natural History Museum of Utah and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science recently published a paper detailing the new species of dinosaur Lythronax argestes, whose first name translates to "King of Gore." Mark Loewen found the 80-million-year-old bone fragments of the new dinosaur.

 

 Links

 Dino pic 1

Dino pic 2

Algae

Algae

 

As you know I did a recent post on animal-like protists and now I am doing one on plant-like protists. This blog post will be mainly about algae. Most people think of algae as disgusting goop that resides on the surface of ponds but there is much more to it than that.

Algae bloom.



A single algae.

 Algae are similar and different than plants in many ways. Just like plants, algae use photosynthesis to obtain food. Unlike plants they lack roots, stems and leaves. They are six different groups of algae all of which are different.

The first group is green algae which is the most common type of algae. Almost half of the world's oxygen comes from green algae.

 

 

Red algae live deep underwater.Red algae have chlorophyll (used for photosynthesis) but they have a red pigment instead of a green one. The reason they are red is because the red pigment helps them absorb sunlight from deep in the ocean.

 

 

Brown algae live underwater too. Many types of kelp and seaweed are a species of brown algae.

 

 

Euglenoids are next. They have a whip like flagella and eyespots that are sensitive to light.

 The celll walls of diatoms or gold-brown algae are rich in silica, the main element in glass.

 

 

Dinoflagellates have special flagella that spin them circles. They are also responsible for red tide which is an algal bloom of dinoflagellates and can harm the ecosystem. Red tide blocks out sunlight from other organisms and deplete oxygen levels in the water.

 

 

Red tide.

 

Algae are useful to use in many ways. Almost half of the oxygen on the planet comes from them. We also eat red and brown algae. Red algae makes stuff like pudding and toothpaste nice and smooth.

That's it for today see you later.

Protozoa

Protists

 

 

Today we are learning about protists. Protists are single or multicelled microrganisms. Some may seem animal or plant-like or even fungi-like by the way they eat. Scientists have classified them in four different groups based on how they move. Protozoa are the animal-like protists. They have to hunt for food like animals do.

Ciliates are the first we will learn about. They have tiny hairs called cilias all around them which help them move around. The cilias also help the protists catch small bacteria which they eat. They are the most complex protozoa because they have two nuclei, the macronucleus and the micronucleus. The macronucleus controls the daily commands. The micronucleus controls reproduction for the ciliate.



Flagelettes use whip like tails to move around. They can also used their tales as a lasso to capture creatures just like a cowboy.

Ameboids use a "false foot" to move. They basically change shape to move and engulf their prey.

Sporozoa are parasitic protists. With no way of moving on their own they inhabit larger living creatures and make them sick. Many diseases are sporozoa such as Malaria, which kills many people every year and are transferred by mosquito and African sleeping sickness.

It's scary that it looks like they have faces.

http://biology.unm.edu/ccouncil/Biology_203/Summaries/Protists.htm