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Monolophosaurus

Name: Monolophosaurus

Pronounced: mono-Loh-foh-sore-us

Meaning: ‘Single-crested lizard’ due to the large, hollow crest on its nose and forehead

Period: Mid Jurassic (180 – 159 million years ago)

Group: Theropods (beast feet)

Size: It was 5.7m long and 5m tall. It weighed around 475kg.

Diet: Carnivore

Characteristics: The Monolophosaurus walked on two legs and had a long bony crest on its narrow head. The top of the crest runs from the tip of its nose to the top of its head and was probably used for display and attracting females. Its jointed jaw was set with lots of pointed sharp teeth to rip open its prey. Its tail was kept straight by a series of tendons and carried off the ground.

Named by: Zhao Xijin and Philip John Currie in 1993

Discovery: Fossils have been discovered by a Canadian-Chinese expedition in 1981, in the Junggar Basin, north-west China. The nearly complete skeleton unearthed, included the skull, lower jaws, vertebral column and pelvis but the bottom of the tail, the shoulder girdle and the limbs were missing. It was restored with plaster and has been used as a travelling exhibit.

Diplodocus

Name: Diplodocus

Pronounced: di-PLOD-o-kus

Meaning: ‘Double-beamed’

Period: Late Jurassic period (155 – 145 million years ago)

Group: Sauropods (lizard feet)

Size: It was 27 m long and 5 m tall at the hips. It weighed between 10,000kg – 20,000kg

Diet: Herbivore

Characteristics: The Diplodocus walked slowly on four elephant-like legs and had an 8 m long neck and a 14 m long, whip-like tail. Its front legs were shorter than its back legs and they had four toes and a thumb claw on each foot. Palaeontologists believe the Diplodocus could not hold their necks more than 5.4 m off the ground. Its head was only half a meter long and its nostrils were at the top, giving it a good sense of smell. The Diplodocus had blunt teeth set at the front of their jaws that were used for stripping leaves off branches. Its main food was probably conifers but may also have included ferns and moss.

Named by: Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878

Discovery: The first Diplodocus fossil was found by Earl Douglass and Samuel W. Williston in 1877. Many more Diplodocus fossils, including a skin impression, have been found in the Rocky Mountains of the western North America, in particular Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming.

Parasaurolophus

Name: Parasaurolophus

Pronounced: pa-ra-saw-ROL-off-us

Meaning: ‘Near crested lizard’

Period: Late Cretaceous (76 – 74 million years ago)

Group: Ornithopods (bird feet)

Size: It was 11m long and 5.2m tall. It weighed about 2000kg.

Diet: Herbivore.

Characteristics: The Parasaurolophus walked on both two and four legs. It had pebbly-textured skin, a beak-like nose and a prominent cranial crest up to 1.8 m long, protruding above its head. There has been a lot of debate over the use of the crest. Males may have had longer crests than females, so it has been suggested the crest was used in courtship displays. Some claim it was used to produce a low-frequency, foghorn-like sound. Some believe it enhanced its sense of smell as its nostrils went up from the end of its nose, through the crest and back down, forming four tubes. It was suggested it acted like a snorkel so they could spend long periods of time in the water, but since there was no nostril at the top, this theory has been rejected. Its web-like fossilised hands also suggested it may have lived in water but many argue these particular fossils became misshapen during the fossilisation process. Also, studies of fossilised stomach contents, showed it mostly ate land plants such as pine needles and other tree leaves, indicating it spent most of its time on land. The Parasaurolophus is believed to have been a herding animal that migrated from shorelines to higher ground to reproduce.

Named by: William Arthur Parks in 1922

Discovery: The Parasaurolophus was first described in 1922 by William Parks from a skull and partial skeleton discovered in Alberta, in Canada. Many other fossil remains have been found in New Mexico and Utah, in North America.

What is an aurora?

An aurora is an amazing natural light show in the sky, most often seen in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. These lights have fascinated people throughout the ages and many travel thousands of miles just to see them. Now you can have an aurora in your own home!

What’s in a name?

The name aurora comes from the Latin word meaning sunrise and was the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn. In the northern latitudes, an aurora is called the aurora borealis or the Northern Lights. Boreas is the Greek name for the north wind.

In the southern latitudes, an aurora is called the aurora australis or the Southern Lights. Australis means “of the south” in Latin.

The plural of aurora is aurorae.

What does an aurora look like?

Aurorae are either diffuse or discrete.

A diffuse aurora is a glow in the sky that cannot usually be seen by people.

A discrete aurora appears within the area of the diffuse aurora and varies in brightness.

Sometimes the lights of the discrete aurora are so bright that you could read a book by them at night time.

A discrete aurora looks like curtains of light that form in an east-west direction – sometimes they change from second to second, sometimes they stay the same for hours on end. The curtains are formed by parallel rays of light lined up in the direction of the magnetic field.

The lights are mostly bright green or red.

What does an aurora sound like?

For many years stories were told of sounds coming from aurorae but scientists did not believe this to be true.

However very recent research recorded clapping sounds coming from an aurora and this noise was thought to be caused by solar particles.

This is a very rare occurrence, which would only be possible to hear on a windless night and away from all other background noise.

What are sunspots?

Sunspots are dark spots that appear from time to time on the surface of the Sun.

These dark spots are caused by extreme magnetic activity. During this activity the Sun’s magnetic field loops out into space instead of looping back into the Sun.  This is called a coronal mass ejection.

The amount of sunspot activity varies from year to year and appears to be in an eleven-year cycle. The time when there is the most sunspot activity is called the solar maximum and when there is the lowest activity it is called the solar minimum.

What is the solar wind?

Ions are particles that have an electrical charge.

The solar wind is a continuous flow of ions that are released from the Sun during a coronal mass ejection.

The solar wind usually reaches Earth at a speed of 400km per second but during a magnetic storm the solar wind can be faster.

What causes an aurora?

The charged ions are blown towards the Earth by the solar wind. The Earth’s magnetic field turns most of them away.

However, the Earth’s magnetic field is weaker at the poles and so some ions enter the Earth’s atmosphere and collide with atoms of gas.

These collisions in Earth’s high atmosphere cause energy to be released in the form of auroral light.

The colours of an aurora

As the ions enter the Earth’s high atmosphere, they bump into atoms of oxygen and nitrogen. The colour of the resulting aurora depends on which atom the ions hit and where they meet.

Auroral displays appear in many colours but shades of green are the most common. These are produced by the collision with oxygen atoms about 95km (60 miles) above the Earth.

Other reported colours include red, blue, yellow and purple.

Where can I see an aurora?

Most aurorae occur in a band known as the auroral zone which is 3° to 6° wide and 10° to 20° from the magnetic poles. Places like Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Scotland are some of the best places to view the Northern Lights.

It is harder to see the Southern lights because there is less land near to the South Pole but the Antarctic, southern Argentina, New Zealand or the island of South Georgia are all places where this phenomenon can be witnessed.

When there are magnetic storms, aurorae can be seen in lower latitudes.