Dogs & Cats or Puppies & Kittens to Color

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Pit Bull Puppy with Squirrel Friend

by a Small Tree, near the Forest

Dogs and Cats are very popular animals.  They are the most popular pets in the world.  There are several breeds of dogs and of cats.  The mixed breed animals, mutts in dogs, are actually more healthy.  

Dogs are descended from wild wolves.  Sometime in prehistoric times a caveman took in a wolf puppy we assume.  Or maybe it was a litter of wolf puppies.  By selective breeding we have created these different breeds of dogs and cats.  Sometimes we breed for only a specific trait and we get problems in other areas. 

Cats are one of the most successful predators of our modern world.  I mean big and little cats.  Lions, Tigers, and Cougars, oh my!  Did you know that a typical housecat, that is let outside, can kill 100 songbirds per year? 

Dogs and cats are very different but they both make great pets...depending on who you ask.  

Tabby Cat on the Lawn

Bichon Puppy with Mouse Friend

Kitten on the Lawn

Swan Pictures to Color

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Swans are a beautiful animal.  There are several different species of swans.  Some are the familiar white, but some are black, and some are white with a black neck. Some have black bills or beaks, some have yellow or orange or even black and yellow beaks.  I encourage you to look up the different types of swans.

These swam pictures are done in two styles.  One style is less realistic for easier coloring by elementary school age children, grades K-3rd. The last picture is done in a more realistic style for older children or adolescents or adults to color.

The below picture was colored by my friend, the neighborhood 11 year old girl named Brielle.
SHE added the reflections, which was brilliant!

Swan that has been colored

Swan looking at its reflection

Swan with Cygnet (Offspring of swans are called cygnets.)

A More Realistic Swan 

Sauropods the Long Neck Dinosaurs

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 Sauropods were the biggest land animal ever to live on Earth.  They were huge!  Some were over 120 feet long and some weighed as much as 10 or more elephants!  As big as they were, they were not the smartest dinosaurs, but they were not totally stupid either.  Sauropods migrated, cared for adolescents, and could defend themselves from predators.  They had a long neck to reach up into trees or maybe to eat ferns like a lawnmower methodically cuts the grass.  In order to digest all those leaves and pine needles Sauropods swallowed stones that we call "gastroliths".  Gastroliths would help grind up the leaves and pine needles.

This is a REAL gastrolith with a Horned Lizard model for size comparison. 

Copyright Robin Lyman 2017

The above gastrolith was found in Eastern Utah and it was located within the ribs of a Sauropod dinosaur.  There is a story of one gastrolith that was actually too big for the dinosaur to swallow.  The gastrolith was found in the throat area...so the poor Sauropod chocked to death from trying to swallow a stone that was too big to swallow.

Their long tail may have been what they called "weaponized."  So,Sauropods may have used their tail like a giant whip.  Some paleontologists even think that some Sauropods could crack their tail like a whip and make loud noises...maybe enough to give carnivorous dinosaurs a headache. The tail would move so fast when they were cracking it that the end of the tail probably broke the sound barrier...it moved faster than sound.  That's 1,236 kilometers per second or 768 miles per hour!!!

Apatosaurus Defending itself from Allosaurus

There was a time when we thought Sauropod or Long Neck dinosaurs lived more like hippos in swamps and rivers.  The idea was that the Sauropods were afraid of the Theropods so Sauropods hid in the rivers and lakes etc.  Paleontologist, once thought that Sauropods would hide in deep water up to their chin and eat soft water plants off the bottom of the river or lake.

Up to their chin in swampy water, living on soft water plants..

This is NOT how Sauropods lived!

That idea, of Sauropods living in swamps, was disproved when Robert Bakker pointed out that if a Sauropod was that deep in water it would not have been able to breathe...it would not have been able to inflate its lungs due to the water pressure on its ribs.
Bakker also pointed out that Sauropods have feet like elephants for walking on dry land, not feet that spread out like a hippopotamus to walk in mud.  Sauropods have spoon-like teeth or peg like teeth for stripping leaves or/and pine needles off of  branches.  So now we think of Sauropods more like the elephants of the Mesozoic. Like modern elephants, their immense size was Sauropods' main defense.


                         

Apatosaurus, a LAND Animal, Feeding on a Cycad Tree

Apatosaurus was called Brontosaurus for a time, until it was found that this animal was named Apatosaurus first.  The first name given the animal is the one that sticks.  Apatosaurus means "deceptive lizard."  Brontosaurus meant "thunder lizard" because it was thought that the animal was so big that when its feet hit the ground it must have sounded like thunder!
.  

Brachiosaurus Feeding on a Cycad Tree

Sauroposeidon was the tallest Brachiosaur, 60 feet tall (18 meters)

Brachiosaurs were the largest known Animals ever to live in North America. Sauroposeidon was 92 feet long and up to 60 feet tall and weighed up to 66 short tons...not that this animal was short.  It was the tallest animal ever to walk the Earth.  That's 18 meters tall, 28 meters long and weighed 60 metric tons

Brachiosaurus for Small Children to Color

Apatosaurus for Small Children to Color

The above drawing of the mother Sauropod and young may or may not be accurate Science.  There is some evidence that Sauropods layed their eggs and abandoned them to their fate, only allowing them to join the herd when they were adolescents...say, as big as elephants.  However, footprints show that adolescents were placed in the middle of the herd for protection.  Also, it is thought that Sauropods migrated.  So, if you have not seen the kid movie Land Before Time, the original one, I would recomend that you watch it.  It was one of the first movies to depict dinosaurs as intelligent enough to care for young, migrate, and even travel in mixed herds.  (Tracks in Wyoming show that last one.)

Dipolodocus Feeding on Cycad Tree

This drawing is done without patterns or stripes and lots of open space.  This is so children can be creative by adding say, more trees, or/and a river, bushes, stripes or spots etc. By the way, some paleontologists think these types of Sauropods called Dilplodocids could possibly stand on their hind legs to reach the tallest leaves.  Diplodocids were among the longest known dinosaurs.  Supersaurus was a Diplodocid that was 120 feet long, (36.5 meters). Seismosaurus was even longer at 131 feet long, (40 meters).   

By the way, to help clarify it for you, these are the eras of life in the history of the Earth.
Mesozoic Era.  The Mesozoic is the era of dinosaurs.  Mesozoic means Middle Life.  Right before the Mesozoic Era was the Paleozoic Era.  Paleozoic means Old Life.  After the Mesozoic came the Cenozoic Era.  Cenozoic means Recent Life.

So, with most recent on top...

CENOZOIC ERA    Age of Mammals.  This is our era.        Examples:  Wooly Mammoth & Humans

MESOZOIC ERA   Age of Dinosaurs   This was the middle era of life  Examples: T. rex & Sauropods

PALEOZOIC ERA   Age of Early Life   Much of it only in seas.  Examples: Trilobites & Dimetrodon

Spinosaurus The Biggest Killer Dinosaur

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For years people thought of T.rex as the biggest killer dinosaur.  This is simply not true.  It IS true that T.-rex had the strongest bone crushing bite. But Spinosaurus was the biggest of all the killer Theropod dinosaurs.

Spinosaurus Hatching Chick      
More Spinosaurus drawings below

The most recent discoveries put Spinosaurus at over 55 feet long.  But surprisingly, the data is accumulating to show that Spinosaurus was a fishing dinosaur most of the time.  Now, it wasn't fishing for 9 inch trout.  It was fishing for 15 feet long saw-fish. There were other large meat eating Theropods in the area, but they primarily hunted on land.  Spinosaurs had motion sensors on their snout so they could sense fish and catch them even when the fish were in murky water.  Spinosaur nostrils were high on their skull or higher up on the snout and we can infer that at times a Spinosaurus could stick only the end of its snout in water to sense and grab the large saw-fish.  Spinosaurs had long cone-like teeth for grabbing fish.  They even had a pair of canine teeth in the front of their mouth.  However, even the huge Spinosaurus could probably not tear fish apart with it's relatively weak jaws, so it had huge claws to act like shusi chef knives to fillet the catch before eating its sushi.

Spinosaurus was originally only known from some bones found in the early 1900's.  The fossilized bones with long sail spines were in a museum in Germany,  This museum was accidentally bombed by Allied bombers during World War II so the fossilized bones were lost to Science.

Then, recently, a new discovery in Morocco found a much more complete skeleton.  For more information I recommend you look up  the National Geographic article on the discovery.  There is also an excellent video called:  Bigger Than T.-rex.  

This more complete set of fossilized Spinosaurus bones are indicating that Spinosaurus may have walked mosly on all fours.  They also indicate that it was a water animal, living much like a crocodile.  There are also a few other types of Spinosaurs like Baryonyx, and Suchomimus.

 These other Spinosaurs did not have the large sail of the Spinosaurus aegyptiacus.

As much as many of us loved the Jurassic Park movies, T.-rex and Spinosaurus lived millions of years apart and on different continents. When they fight in Jurasic Park III the T.rex looses.  But, if you think about the powerful bone crushing bite of T. rex it is possible to infer that T. rex would have torn Spinosaurus' face off.  Then agian, Spinosaurus was larger, and Spinosaurus had huge muscular arms with 3 sharp sushi kives on each arm.  So maybe it would have been a fair fight.  Of course, remember, they never met in real life.

                                                              

Spinosaurus Close-up  Notice the canine teeth. 

Spinosaurus going Fishing with Young

  Spinosaurus Fishing   This is a 4 footed stance.

A Spotted Spinosaurus, notice the sushi knife claws!

Remember that we don't know what color they were, or if they had spots, stripes, etc. 

I hope you have fun coloring these pictures!

Science and Religion- with drawings from both

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A few thoughts on Religion & Science + drawings from both.  Can a scientist be religious?

Some people think that you can't be a religious person and a scientist.  I want to dispel that myth. Partly because I have heard this myth from both sides.  There have been religious people who think my wife and I are controversial because we have studied and taught Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.  We even went to the Galapagos Islands where Darwin started to figure out Natural Selection.  On the other hand, there was one scientist we met who thought that we being believers in God was totally incompatible with scientific thought.

To these two sides of the argument I say that God is and always will be the greatest scientist.  There are things we do not understand clearly in scripture and there are things we do not clearly understand in science.  I'll admit that there are apparent incompatibilities between some scientific ideas and some religious ideas.  But I think that in the end we will see that there really are no incompatibilities, just our previously limited understanding of the complete picture.

So look at the huge lack of knowledge we have in Astronomy.  I am an armature astronomer and I know a little about this subject.  As we gain more knowledge about the universe we have discovered that apparently there is a huge amount of matter and energy that we know nearly nothing about...other than it must be there.  (Dark Energy and Dark Matter)  

Through the study of Biology and Paleontology we have come to understand so much about how Natural Selection gave us such a diversity of life, but many if not most of the life of the past is not known to us because everything did not get preserved as fossils.  Trying to understand the ecosystem of the Cretaceous or Jurassic Periods can only go so far because much of the biodiversity can only be guessed at.  In fact we have to infer a great deal about extinct ecosystems based on our modern ecosystems.  New discoveries frequently tell us that our scientific inferences were wrong.  One example is that we used to think the long necked Sauropod dinosaurs lived in swamps. Scientists learn new things all the time and revise their theories.

In religion we hope for happiness in the next life, but we rely on faith that it will be good for those of us who had faith and were good in mortality.  Many scientists are also religious and many feel that in their studies and research they are working on trying to find out the mysteries of God's creation.  My father, a physician and surgeon, called medical science Man's attempt to "subdue the Earth."  That does not mean destroy or wreck the Earth, it means control the Earth appropriately while we preserve it.  Vaccines subdue part of the Earth.  Central heating and air conditioning is subduing the Earth.  I was born with severe birth defects and my dad said the surgeons and other medical professionals were subduing the Earth by beating my birth defects and keeping me alive, (against all odds).
Yet my parents also prayed for the surgeons to be able to figure out what to do to save me, (since all the other babies, before me, with a tracheoesophageal fistula died).

So, faith AND medical science saved me...and continues to save me.  I just got a new T-tube put in last month to keep my collapsing windpipe (trachea) open.  My doctors gave me a choice of the
T-tube or try to stay alive with my trachea collapsing when I coughed or exerted myself at all. Through prayer I felt that the T-tube was the best choice.  It has turned out pretty good so far.  I am grateful to modern medical science and the Lord for the answer to my prayers.

We don't know how some apparent inconsistencies between science and faith will work out, but I believe that they WILL work out in the end.  We can speculate for answers.  I find that kind of fun. For instance, there are many ways you can conjecture how Adam and Eve came into existence.  A scientist might say that Adam and Eve could not have been real people, but what if they evolved and were the perfect end product for God to begin modern Mankind...so He, God, plucked a very young Adam and Eve from their respective villages and wiped much of their memories and placed them in the Garden of Eden.  Maybe (or probably) I'm way off with this speculation, but I know the evidence for evolution and even Human evolution is fairly strong, and yet I believe that Adam and Eve were real people.  So for me it is fun to think about it.  And YES I know this is a lot of speculation. . .
I'm not saying it is true, just some fun speculation.

What is frustrating to me is religious people who just dismiss the science and scientists as evil heretics and the scientists who just dismiss the religious people as deluded kooks.  As my wife says, "Someday God is going to take the scientists and religious people all together and say 'Now let me show you how I REALLY did it!'"

At the very least we can do without attacking the ideas of the other side of the religion vs science debate.  I take exception to a scientist who says there is no proof that there is a god.  Religion or perhaps faith are about believing in things that generally can't be proven physically.  Science is about collecting and analyzing the facts.  You can't take scientific facts and say it proves that faith is nonsense because faith is not about physical facts.  It is like a carpenter saying since he doesn't comprehend nuclear power then nuclear power can't be true.

I hope this does not offend any of my readers.  As a teacher I never used science to attack another's beliefs.  I DID say that these are the current theories and ideas of science and we were going to study them.  To people of faith I say: You can reject a hypothesis or even a theory, but don't reject others who accept the theory.  The same goes for scientists:  If you have a problem with the ideas of religion please remember that along with some bad, religion has done a lot of good in the world too.  You can keep you ideas and still respect people of faith.  True, some scientists do not believe in God. However, over the years I have met and known many scientists that were religious. This includes scientists from both religion sponsored universities AND  public universities.

So, often, to keep my ADHD brain focused in church I draw.  If there are nearby kids I give them some drawings to color: dinosaurs, unicorns, puppies, etc.  But, I also draw pictures from scripture stories or drawings like the below one of Jesus near Jerusalem.  I often like to draw a picture of Jesus as a young adult, before he started his ministry.  The other picture is of the mating dance of a type of bird found in the Galapagos Islands called Blue-Footed Boobies.

Religion Drawings

Jesus at 20 years old near Jerusalem

A neighbor of mine,11 year old Brielle, colored this drawing.

 She is very good!

 I have it framed and hanging on my wall in my art room.   

Jesus at about 25 years old again near Jerusalem

I know I'm kind of late with this, but I did this drawing

 from a photo of my daughter and grandchild. 

Science Drawings, from the Galapagos Islands

This is a quick drawing of Blue Footed Boobies doing their mating dance.

We saw these birds diving into the water at 45 mph. 

This is the photo I took in the Galapagos that I used to draw the below coloring page drawing. 

The drop of liquid off the end of the beak is hyper-tonic water or salt water.  Boobies use their nostrils to excrete excess salt.  They drink sea water and have to get rid of all that extra salt.  Also, they could not use their nostrils to breathe because they dive into the water at high speed and so if their nostrils were used for breathing they would drown when they dove for fish.  

The island across the water shows how some islands there in the 

Galapagos have many many volcanoes. 

Some of the islands have over 100 volcanoes!

Notice the drop of salty water off the end of the beak. 

All these drawings (that are not colored) are available on the Free Printable Downloads. 

Theropods-Meat Eater Dinos

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Theropod dinosaurs are not extinct.  Most paleontologists feel that there are "Avian Theroods" and "Non-avian Theropods."  Therefore the Theropod dinosaurs are not extinct.  There are still Avian Theropods, . . that we also call birds!  A very popular series of movies had Velociraptor with no feathers during the first movies and just a few proto-feathers in the next movies.  Based on several species of feathered dinosaurs found in China, it is thought that by the Cretaceous Period most if not all smaller Theropods had feathers.  These feathers may have been for display to look fierce or bigger to opponents or in competition for mates.  (Looking good for the ladies!)  There is even evidence of a couple of larger Theropods, around 30 feet long, that also had feathers..  Yutyrannus was one of these larger feathered predatory dinosaurs.  (Yutyrannus drawing coming on a later post)   Utahraptor and Velociraptor are also thought to be feathered as well.  With Yutyrannus the feathers actually fossilized and so there is no doubt.  Among the small feathered dinosaurs was the 2-3 foot long Microraptor.  It even had flying feathers on its legs, as well as its arms.  By chemical analysis of the fossilized feathers  of  Microraptor we know the dinosaur was black with an iridescent nature. ..kind of like Iridescent surfaces tend to appear change color as your angle of view changes.  Often you see colors of the rainbow, like in motor oil spilled in a puddle.  That would make your coloring of the below Microraptor losts of fun!  Some other small flying dinosaurs of the same time, during the late Cretaceous, had feathers that were tans, reddish browns, browns and black.

    This above color drawing of mine is Copyright 2012 by Robin Lyman. 

This drawing has an optical illusion.  

The T.-rex in the foreground looks like she is looking at the closer Triceratops, and then she looks like she moves her head and is looking at the other Triceratops.

It was done primarily with pastel chalk.

It is easy to blend colors with pastel chalk, but you can also blend colors with crayons.  

Try blending with crayons:  color lightly with two colors and overlap where the colors touch.  

The below coloring pages are all drawings of  Theropods.  Remember that modern lizards, mammals,  and birds come in many different colors and patterns.  Please don't be boring and assume that all dinosaurs were gray.  Of course, some large animals are gray, such as elephants and rhinos,amphibians, I will admit that some large reptiles like crocodiles are a dark green color.  However, some modern animals are multicolored and/or patterned.  When we look at modern animals we can make an inference as to what dinosaurs may have looked like.  So, a spotted T.-rex, is possible.  A striped Theropod is possible.  Multicolored feathers on a Velociraptor is possible.  Of course, those animals are in the past, and we don't have a time machine, so we may never know the coloring of some extinct animals.   Then again, as technology improved we learned the color of  Microraptor!

Microraptor Flying Through The Forest   Remember that this dinosaur had black iridescent feathers...so have fun using lots of colors along with the black!

Velociraptors lived in the desert of Mongolia in the Late Cretaceous Period. Most Paleontologists would agree that Velocirpator looked more like a larger roadrunner rather than a two footed lizard.  Velociraptor was only 6 feet long and 4 or so feet high, but it still was probably a vicious and deadly pack hunter!

Modern crocodiles carry their offspring in their mouth, so we could infer that T.-rex did the same.

This mother T.rex is not eating her baby.  In fact, it is thought that T.-rex were good parents!  FYI the note on the picture is because this picture was originally drawn for Mother's Day.

Spinosaurus was a Theropod that may have lived more like a modern crocodile.  So Spinosaurs could swim and lived near and in fresh water lakes and rivers.  Along with fish bones, Spinosaurus rib cages have been found with bones of other dinosaurs inside where the stomach would have been.  So Spinosaurus may have eaten mostly fish, but ate land animals when the fishing was bad.  Spinosaurus lived in North Africa of the late Cretaceous... (more on different Spinosaurs on a later blog entry)

One more note of interest:  Fossilized footprints, found in Southern Utah, of a small Theropod going from a beach into the water of a lake indicate that Theropod dinosaurs could swim.  The tracks even show scratch marks where the small Theropod pushed off from the beach and started to swim!

So, we can infer that all Theropod dinosaurs could swim.

Allosaurus was a North American dinosaur of the Jurassic Period.  Allosaurus was one of the top predators of the Jurassic Period.  T.-rex had yet to appear during the Jurassic Period.  Notice that 

Allosaurus had 3 fingers on each hand, not two fingers like T-rex.  Allosaurus was a little shorter than T.-rex  and a little lighter.  However, Allosaurus arms were bigger than T.-rex arms.

As I said before, T.-rex could have had stripes OR spots!

By the way, the young T.-rex is called a "chick" ...just like a baby bird...since T.-rex were non-avian Theropods and birds are avian Theropods.  Remember that birds are a type of Theropod dinosuars, So....
 DINOSAURS ARE NOT EXTINCT!!!!!

Unicorns!

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Unicorns are a mythical creature but they were described in ancient Greek writings on nature,  The Greeks truly believed that unicorns were a real creature.  They were reported to have cloven hooves like a goat and the general body shape of a horse with a tail like a lion.  Different stories or reports have unicorns as pure white, or red, or blue.  I feel that if unicorns were real they would be a close relative of the horse.  They would come in many colors and possibly patterns like the Mustangs of the American West.
From a historical perspective, there are ancient tapestries that have unicorns on them.  The throne chair of Denmark is supposed to be made of unicorn horns, however, these "unicorn horns" are probably narwhal tusks. There are reports of European travelers seeing an Indian animal that they reported as being huge and shaped like a pig and even liking to wallow around in mud.  This "unicorn" was certainly an Indian rhinoceros.
Back to the legend or mythology of the unicorn:
-They are very intelligent.
-They can only be captured and tamed by a maiden.  In fact a unicorn can be so full of love for a fair      maiden that he will come up to a seated maiden and lay his head down in the maiden's lap.
-The horn is made of a substance called "alicorn" and was powerfully magical in and of itself.
-Differing views on unicorn blood are that it is either deadly or life sustaining.
-Unicorns are pure in heart and to catch one the maiden also has to be pure in heart.

NOTE:  My unicorn drawings are are stylized in various ways.  Some are more simple and some are more detailed and more realistic.  Other drawings are meant for younger children who color. Sometimes I draw a traditional unicorn tail and other times I like to draw a beautiful arched  tail more like those seen on Arabian horses.

This color drawing of the unicorn is Copyright Robin Lyman, 2012.  

   I drew this colored unicorn from a photo of my niece's horse.  The horse was named Susie.  The drawing is done in color pencils and pastel chalk.  If you look closely you will see that animal fur and/or hair can be composed of many different colors.  Try this in your coloring of animals.  A "brown horse's" hair or/and fur is actually several different colors that blend together when you look at the horse from a distance.  You can blend colors with crayons by coloring in the same place very lightly with more than one color of crayon...OR by drawing many short lines or long lines to represent individual hairs. 
I hope you enjoy coloring the other unicorn pictures.

Unicorn and Squirrel

Unicorn and Mermaid

Unicorn at Sunrise

Unicorn by a River

Unicorn on a Hill