Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is a beautiful dog.  They make excellent pets.  I am not an expert but I know Brinkley.  He belongs to my sister.  We have taken care of him before and he is a sweetheart.  He has very soft fur.  His temperament is just what you want in a dog that is a family pet.  I took this photo this past weekend and then I drew Brinkley.  My drawing is not a perfect likeness, but it is a fairly good representation of the breed. 

Brinkley

Terror Birds

Terror Bird and Mesohippus Prey

(Mesohippus is My Little Drunk Pony)

Phorusrhacidae were a Family of carnivorous flightless birds that went extinct around the same time Man appeared...possibly later.  They originated in South America and migrated to North America.  There is some evidence that they even made it to Africa.  Some species of Terror Birds were almost 10 feet  (9 meters) tall.  These birds had huge heads and beaks.  The largest measured beak was 18 inch s (46 cm) long and the beak and skull together measured 28 inches (71 cm).  The neck muscles were very powerful and could generate a tremendous amount of force to kill prey.  The beak of the terror birds had a notch like many birds of prey have on their beaks.  You can think of the size of the beak as larger than a basketball.

If you look closely at he feet you see that this horse did not have a single hoof toe.  In fact, it had three toes on each foot. Over the course of the evolution of horses eventually horses ended up with one toe or hoof on each foot.

There is an excellent documentary that I recommend.  It is called Walking With Prehistoric Beasts. 
This BBC documentary is the sequel to Walking With Dinosaurs.  There is a scene in one episode I like to call "my little drunk pony." During this time horses had not yet evolved large size.  In the scene a group of horses that were about as large as a medium sized dog, ate some fermented grapes and got plastered...that is, they got drunk.  Then when a Terror Bird comes hunting the little horses are in big trouble.  It is hard to run away when you are completely soused or drunk. Note the grapes scattered on the ground in my drawing.

There were 17 species of Terror Birds over the years of their existence...and some were only a foot tall.  But as previously mentioned, some were huge.   Remember that birds are now often called "Avian Dinosaurs."  You could kind of think of this animal type as the Tyrannosaurs of their day.  When the meteorite wiped out T. rex and company the Terror Birds took the niche of predators.  Some paleontologists think that Terror Birds were out-competed by saber tooth cats and wolves in most parts of the world, but in South America Terror Birds were the top dog...ok, top predator.  Terror birds lived for 60 million years and only went extinct somewhere between 2.5 million and 200,000 years ago.  Some evidence suggests that they may have even lived into the age of Man.  There is even some speculation that humans  may have wiped the Terror Birds out.  ...or been the cause of Terror Bird extinction.

Skeleton of Terror Bird

from Museum of Ancient Life, Lehi, Utah

Geologic Sandwich Science Lab Activity

This is a classroom activity my wife taught me.  Her student teacher years ago taught her this.  It is a lab activity to teach the evolution or development of life on Earth over the last 4.6 billion years.  This lesson is fun but stinky.  (Some people don't like the smell of some of the ingredients.)

Geologic Sandwich Labsheet

Ingredients or Lab Equipment or Supplies Needed:
-paper plates
-butter knife
-mayonaise
-green food coloring
-loaf of brown wheat bread, although any sliced bread will do
-raisins
-oysters and or clams
-sardines
-celery sticks
-thin sliced pastrami
-chicken lunch meat
-Turkey lunch meat
-Turkey lunch meat
-onions (scallions)
-sliced cheese

Talk to the students about each organism as the organisms are placed on the bread.  Put a piece of bread between each of the organisms.

Start with green mayo on a slice of bread.  This represents the single celled organisms that were the first life on Earth...in the oceans actually.  There are 6 kingdoms of life.  They evolved as follows:  First were Kingdom: Archaebacteria about 3.5 Billion years ago....then there  Kingdom:  Eubacteria 2.5 billion years ago or so....  These bacteria kingdoms had single celled bacteria that do not have nuclei in theer cells.  then about 1.5 billion years ago the single celled protists.  Kingdom Protista are mostly
single celled but they DO have nuclei.  The slime or green mayo represents these forms of life.
On the worksheet or labsheet the students write the name of the Precambrian Era.

Next add a piece of bread and place raisins on it.  Raisins are the trilobites.  Trilobites were the first arthropods...that is, animals with an exoskeleton...like insects, spiders, crabs etc.  Trilobites were preceded by sponges and jellyfish, but we do not have anything in the lab to represent them.  On the labsheet write the name of the Paleozoic in the Era column and in the Periods column write Cambrian.

Add another piece of bread and place oysters on it.  This represents invertebrates like cephalopods or brachiopods.   Now wrtie the name Ordovician in the Periods column.

Add another piece of bread and place another oyster or a clam on it to represent more invertebrates.  Write the word Silurian in the Periods column.

more bread and add a couple of sardines...canned sardines.   These represent the age of fishes or the Devonian.  Write down Devonian in the Periods column.

More bread and add a few pieces of celery to represent non-flowering plants.  You could be more accurate and add pine nuts instead, but i am severely allergic to pine nuts so I don't use them.  You could explain that the celery looks like a cycad trunk.  Also explain that in Europe they use the term Carboniferous for the two periods that we call the Mississippian / Pennsylvanian.  Write those down in the blank in the Periods column. 

Another piece of bread and a piece of salami.  This represents the first amphibians and reptiles of the Permian Period...so write down Permian in the Periods column.

Now we are in the Mesozoic Era.  This is the age of Dinosaurs.  Write down the word Paleozoic in the Era column.  Add on the next piece of bread a piece of chicken lunch meat.  Write Triassic in the Periods Column.

Now another piece of bread and add a piece of turkey lunch meat and write down Jurassic in the Periods column.

Place more bread on the sandwich you are working on and add a piece of lunch meat turkey.  Last period of the Mesozoic Era is Cretaeous so write it down.

Now we are in the Cenozoic Era so write it in the Era column.  Now add more bread and place an onion to represent the explosion of flowering plants.  Write the Period... Tertiary.

Lastly more bread and a piece of cheese to represent the age of mammals.  Now write down Quaternary in the periods column.

Now explain that the rock layers often get vey compressed so squash the sandwich and then explain that rock layers break, so cut the sandwich.  You can now use the sandwich halves to explain strike slip faults like the San Andreas Fault in California.  (Slide the halves horizontally along the cut.)   A normal fault would be like the mountain/valley faults seen in Utah and Nevada.  (Slide the halves up and down)  Thrust faults are like where India crashed into Asia to create the Himalayan Mountains.  (Push halves together.) 

Recommendation:  Don't try and eat it,

Remember that eras are divided up into periods.  Older eras and periods are on the bottom and younger ones are on top.   This is the law of superposition..

Review of Eras and Periods for worksheet;

    ERA                                       PERIOD
Cenozoic                           Quaternary
                                          Tertiary

                                        Cretaceous
Mesozoic                         Jurassic
                                        Triassic
   
                                        Permian
                                        Mississippian/Pennsylvanian  (Carboniferous in Europe)
Paleozoic                         Devonian
                                         Silurian
                                        Ordovician
                                         Cambrian

The Greatest Showman circus coloring pages

I was so inspired by the new movie The Greatest Showman.  It was so well done.  I am a person  physical and health disabilities or challenges.  I live with a tracheotomy T Tube in my throat.  I could relate to the characters that were much of the cast.  These were called the freaks by some unkind people in the movie.  I can tell you that those of us with different bodies than normal are still worthwhile and often very good talented people.  The song "This Is Me" made me shed a few tears.  I know how the characters feel.  Yet in my life many good people have accepted me and made me welcome in their lives.  That would include thousands of students who let me teach them without ever saying anything rude.  ONE time a student was rude about my disability and the rest of the class chided him so I did not feel the need to.

Bearded Lady, Little General, and Tattooed Man

Did you know that things did not really happen exactly like they did in the movie, but some parts were  right on.  When Barnum lost his fortune his good friend "TomThumb" or the "Little General" contacted him and went on  a European tour with him and restored Barnum's fortune.  So it appears to me that 

P. T. Barnum really did have a good relationship with his performers.  

The circus performers were from different races and many of the people of New England or New York were still very prejudice in the 1800's.  Not in the movie is the fact that Barnum was a strong supporter of the North or Union in the American Civil War.  He spoke against slavery and said all people were children of God.  It was a Confederate sympathizer that burned his building  down.  

Trapeze Artist female 

Trapeze Artist redo

Trapeze Artist 2

I drew a trapeze artist but she clearly does not approach the beauty of the actress Zendaya who played the female trapeze artist in the movie.   Today, February 17th, I am adding a redo of the above drawing and a closer version of the drawing.   I could draw this much better than this drawing with fine point markers on a coloring page.  The more detailed kind of drawing with pencils and airbrush takes about 40 hours.  In any case,  I highly recommend this wonderful movie.  Every song was inspiring!!!  We've seen it twice now and are going again next week.

Since so many people are interested in this circus coloring page I made a second.  However, so it will be easier for you I am adding those drawings here as well. 

Ringmaster and Circus Performers from The Greatest Showman

Jumbo was an African Elephant who was orphaned as a calf.  He was living in the London Zoo when P. T. Barnum purchased him for the circus.  Jumbo was huge.  He died when he was hit by a train...possibly when he was trying to rescue an elephant calf that had wandered off.  The calf got a broken leg.   Jumbo did not make it.  He may have been 13.1 feet or 4 meters tall in his prime.  Of course P. T. Barnum said that were the measurements and he was known to exaggerate things like size.  The word "jumbo" has come to mean large sized.  Jumbo was not featured in the movie:  The Greatest Showman.  More about Jumbo on my later post titled:
 "The Greatest Showman Coloring Pages 2".  

Jumbo

Jumbo the circus elephant takes on the Train

Apostle Peter and the Unclean Beasts

Peter and the vision of Unclean Beasts

Peter was the lead apostle which in my religion means he was the prophet after Jesus ascended to heaven.  Peter was staying at a friend's house when a good man, a non-Jew or Gentile...sent his servants to see him.  Peter did not know it but the man had had a vision and had been told to go get Peter.   This man was a Roman Centurion or officer.  He was a good man who feared God and gave much to the poor. 

Peter was taking a nap in the day, on the roof of his friend's house.  He saw a vision in a dream.  He saw many unclean or common beasts in a huge sheet let down from heaven.  He was told to rise and kill and eat them.  Peter protested that he had never broke Jewish law and eaten unclean beasts.  But the voice from heaven told him, "What God hath cleansed call thou not common."  

This was a message to Peter to start spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.  Peter was told that the men were at the door and to go with them.  Peter taught Cornelius and his household and many of his friends.  Peter told them that God had told him to not call any man common or unclean.  Many Gentiles, including Cornelius and his family and friends accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ.   This goes to show that God is no respecter of persons or that can be said by saying that God loves us all as His children.

Halszkaraptor the Swimming Raptor Dinosaur

Halszkaraptor about to go Fishing

NOTE:  My main computer is still broken so I can not scan this cleanly so
there will not be a printable version for a few days.

Have you ever heard of a SWIMMING dinosaur... I don't mean a marine reptile, I mean a dinosaur that actually swims to hunt for prey...AKA fishing.  Well, you are about to hear about one...

Halszkaraptor escuilliei is a recent find from Mongolia.  The fossil was in a private collector's collection but it had been illegally exported from Mongolia.  It was so unusual that paleontologists at first thought it was a fake.  Synchrotron tomography (a type of cT x-ray scan) revealed that this was a real animal that lived an unusual lifestyle.  It had many sharp teeth and a nerve cluster in its snout called a plexus.  A plexus is what crocodilians have for detecting movement of prey underwater.  The Halszkaraptor also had flattened feet that would have made great paddles.  All these clues led paleontologists to conclude that it lived an amphibious lifestyle.  It was not an amphibian but it did live both in and out of the water.  This is an amazing discovery!

This bird looks remarkably like the flightless cormorant from the Galapagos Islands.  The cormorants in other parts of the world fly and dive into the water from up high to catch fish.  The flightless cormorant lives on the rocks of the Galapagos Islands and dives directly from land into the ocean.  It evolved to the point where it no longer needed to fly.  There were no predators and the fish were plentiful.  I think that the same conditions existed where Halzkaraptor lived in Mongolia, back in the Cretaceous Period 70 million years ago.

When two organisms evolve to have similar characteristics this is called convergent evolution.  Another example of convergent evolution would be how dolphins are shaped much like an Ichthyosaur.  Both have  long streamlined bodies, flat fluke tails, flippers for legs, and a flat tail for propulsion through the water.   These traits are all useful for living in the water so many animals that live in water have these characteristics...even though they evolved completely independently.  A dolphin and an Ichthyosaur are not related at all.  One is a mammal and the other is a reptile.

Thomas S. Monson as a boy

Thomas S. Monson as a Paperboy

We heard the news this morning that our Prophet, Thomas S. Monson passed away last night at about 10:00 p.m.  I that  know many of you who print my pages to color are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  That is fine, I just want to share a little bit about one of the men who LDS people like me have loved over the last 50+ years.  I am aware that there are good leaders of other religions that do also much good in the world.

We call our prophet the president of the church.  So, President Monson was a great man because he gave much of his attention to the common man.  He once shook my brother in law's hand (when my brother in law was only 15).  Then Elder Monson was dedicating the new ward building or chapel in Belle Fourche, South Dakota.  Afterwards Elder Monson shook hands with all the children's and youth's.  This brother in law, named Myren, went to BYU in Provo, Utah, 3 or so years later.  One day he was walking across campus and Elder Monson was walking the other way. Elder Monson looked at Myren and said, "Hello Myren."  Myren was shocked that Elder Monson could remember who he was.  At the time Elder Monson was a junior member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles.

Many people over the years came to love him because he could remember their names and he truly cared about them.  When he was a bishop of our church at the young age of 22 he took care of over 80 widows who lived in his ward boundaries.  A ward is a congregation from a given area.  Bishop Monson kept in touch with these widows and even after he was released and was no longer theri bishop he always checked in on them until the very last one passed away.

President Monson served in the U.S. Navy during World War 2.  He then worked for the local paper called the Deseret News.   He started as the manager of the classified ads section.  Then he was made sales manager.  Next he was made assistant manager of the news paper.  His career was interrupted by a call from the prophet to serve a mission as mission president of the Canadian Mission.  He returned to the Deseret News and was made Manager of the Deseret News Press.   I don't know if the young Tommy Monson ever had a paper route but I drew a picture of him delivering papers from the Deseret News.  .  .  a Newspaper where he would be employed and eventually run.  So a drawing of him as a paper boy for the Deseret News seemed fitting.  If he was a paperboy it would have been in the mid 1930's or so.  .   . in Salt Lake City, Utah.

He was called as an Apostle when he was just 36 years old.  You are never released from the calling of Apostle until you pass away.  If you are the most senior apostle you become the Prophet and President of the Church.

Elder and then President Monson taught with stories.  He loved people and loved to serve them.  He would duck out of his busy schedule to go visit an elderly friend in a rest home or a friend in the hospital.

The love of his life passed away a few years ago and now Thomas S. Monson is with his eternal companion for eternity.  We believe that marriage, when you are sealed in the Temple, is for not only time (til death do us part)...but we believe marriage is eternal.  If we are sealed for time and all etenity in the Temple, and we keep God's commandments to be kind, serve others, and stay away from the things that God has forbidden, then we can live for eternity with our Savior Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Parents, and of course our Eternal Companion and our worthy children.