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Predator Trap
A predator trap is a natural hazard where prey animals become trapped or incapacitated, and the attracted predators suffer the same fate. More predators, scavengers, insects and birds become attracted to this mounting accumulation of carrion, until a wide variety of animals are caught and ultimately killed by the hazard. This may happen many times over. Typically, the number of lured predators will greatly outnumber the prey, thus providing the name. A famous example is the La Brea Tar Pits site, where predators were attracted to struggling animals that had become entrapped in tar. It has been speculated that the mudstone deposits at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry may have been a predator trap, with dinosaurs becoming trapped in mud as they approached the floodpond. The Gobi Desert dinosaur death traps may have been sauropod footprints that have been filled with a mixture of thick mud and sandstone in the former wetland. The "Valley of Death" near the Kikhpinych Kikhpin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smilodon And Canis Dirus
''Smilodon'' is a genus of the extinct machairodont subfamily of the felids. It is one of the most famous prehistoric mammals and the best known saber-toothed cat. Although commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger, it was not closely related to the tiger or other modern cats. ''Smilodon'' lived in the Americas during the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 mya – 10,000 years ago). The genus was named in 1842 based on fossils from Brazil; the generic name means "scalpel" or "two-edged knife" combined with "tooth". Three species are recognized today: ''S. gracilis'', ''S. fatalis'', and ''S. populator''. The two latter species were probably descended from ''S. gracilis'', which itself probably evolved from ''Megantereon''. The hundreds of individuals obtained from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles constitute the largest collection of ''Smilodon'' fossils. Overall, ''Smilodon'' was more robustly built than any extant cat, with particularly well-developed forelimbs an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Brea Tar Pits
La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground for tens of thousands of years. Over many centuries, the bones of trapped animals have been preserved. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. La Brea Tar Pits is a registered National Natural Landmark. Formation Tar pits are composed of heavy oil fractions called gilsonite, which seeps from the Earth as oil. Crude oil seeps up along the 6th Street Fault from the Salt Lake Oil Field, which underlies much of the Fairfax District north of Hancock Park. The oil reaches the surface and forms pools, becoming asphalt as the lighter fractions of the petroleum biodegrade or evaporate. The asphalt then normally hardens into stubby mounds. The pools and mou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mudstone
Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Mudstone is distinguished from '' shale'' by its lack of fissility (parallel layering).Blatt, H., and R.J. Tracy, 1996, ''Petrology.'' New York, New York, W. H. Freeman, 2nd ed, 529 pp. The term ''mudstone'' is also used to describe carbonate rocks (limestone or dolomite) that are composed predominantly of carbonate mud. However, in most contexts, the term refers to siliciclastic mudstone, composed mostly of silicate minerals. The NASA Curiosity rover has found deposits of mudstone on Mars that contain organic substances such as propane, benzene and toluene. Definition There is not a single definition of mudstone that has gained general acceptance,Boggs 2006, p.143 though there is wide agreement that mudstones are fine-grained sedimentary rocks, composed mostly of silicate grains with a grain size less than . Individual grains this size are too small to be disting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry
Jurassic National Monument, at the site of the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, well known for containing the densest concentration of Jurassic dinosaur fossils ever found, is a paleontological site located near Cleveland, Utah, in the San Rafael Swell, a part of the Stratum, geological layers known as the Morrison Formation. Well over 15,000 bones have been excavated from this Jurassic excavation site and there are many thousands more awaiting excavation and study. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in October 1965. The John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 12, 2019, named it as a List of national monuments of the United States, national monument. All of these bones, belonging to different species, are found disarticulated and indistinctly mixed together. It has been hypothesised that this strong concentration of mixed fossilised bones is due to a "predator trap", but any kind of definit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sauropoda
Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their body), and four thick, pillar-like legs. They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the group includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land. Well-known genera include ''Brachiosaurus'', ''Diplodocus'', ''Apatosaurus'' and ''Brontosaurus''. The oldest known unequivocal sauropod dinosaurs are known from the Early Jurassic. ''Isanosaurus'' and ''Antetonitrus'' were originally described as Triassic sauropods, but their age, and in the case of ''Antetonitrus'' also its sauropod status, were subsequently questioned. Sauropod-like sauropodomorph tracks from the Fleming Fjord Formation (Greenland) might, however, indicate the occurrence of the group in the Late Triassic. By the Late Jurassic (150 million yea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kikhpinych
Kikhpinych (russian: link=no, Кихпиныч) is a stratovolcano located in the eastern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula, which feeds the famous Valley of Geysers. At its foot is a area known as the "Valley of Death", where volcanic gases accumulate and kill birds and mammals that enter the valley. Research in the 1970s and 1980s showed that a mix of hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and carbon disulphide was produced by the volcano, gathering in a valley area where it could not be easily dispersed by winds and creating a predator trap. The gas forms in spring when the snow melts, first killing birds which drink at the river, followed by foxes and other carnivores which are attracted to the carrion. See also * List of volcanoes in Russia This is a list of active and extinct volcanoes in Russia. European Russia Kamchatka Volcanoes of the Kamchatka Peninsula of the northwestern Pacific Ocean and the Russian Far East. Kuril Islands Volcanoes of the Ku ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geological Hazards
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other Astronomical object, astronomical objects, the features or rock (geology), rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth science, Earth sciences, including hydrology, and so is treated as one major aspect of integrated Earth system science and planetary science. Geology describes the structure of the Earth on and beneath its surface, and the processes that have shaped that structure. It also provides tools to determine the Relative dating, relative and Geochronology, absolute ages of rocks found in a given location, and also to describe the histories of those rocks. By combining these tools, geologists are able to chronicle the geological history of the Earth as a whole, and also to demonstrate the age of the Earth. Geology provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and the Eart ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
