Does this image look at all familiar to you?
How about this one?
No, these are not images of the newest extra-solar planets. We're probably about a decade or two away from imaging our newly discovered neighbour in Gliese this well.
If they're not terribly familiar, don't be too hard on yourself. There's a good reason.
Not nearly enough textbooks — or any books for young people for that matter — show proper images of what the Earth actually looked like according to our best science when the dinosaurs lived (or earlier).
One book I consulted at Elwick Library while subbing recently for Hilary March, implied — through omission, actually — that North America was the same then as now. (It had a very misleading passage on dinosaurs being located in Texas, neglecting to mention that 'Texas' was actually coastline and underwater at that point.)
As the substitute teacher I was talking with about this agreed, all this becomes very confusing when you try to explain to children where things like the KT impact actually took place. That's the Cretaceous (K) Tertiary (T) impact, where a large object (let's not argue over what for the time being) struck the Earth and caused an extinction level event (ELE), ending the reign of the dinosaurs (and 90+% of all life on Earth).It's all very nice that there are lovely interpretative illustrations in most children's books showing fleeing or frightened or frying dinosaurs. (Of course, my sympathies are with the mammals.) It's just that it doesn't help to let children develop a notion that they won't be disabused of until they take a university course in paleontology or geology in 10 or more years time (if ever).
In the meantime, would it kill publishers to include an actual image from a real science text? I remember quite well that my history textbooks used to have reproductions of historic paintings and photographs of famous historical sites. And colour printing has come a long way in those 20+ years.
Next year, when you are providing resources to classes working on dinosaur projects, or Earth history, do remind your patrons that the Earth was changing right along with the life living on it.
The images above and many other marvellous recreations, the work of a real scientist, Prof. Christopher R. Scotese, can be found at
Earth History: The Paleomap Project
URL <http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm>
And if you want to find a fantastic video to show off — something that will make the kids think you totally rock and the teachers think you really know your stuff — check out these two animations.
The first — what I was originally looking for but couldn't find when first writing this post — is on GoogleVideo, a quite scientific animation, created and uploaded by Radek Michalik of the Science Institute, Columbia College, Chicago.
It is one of very few that actually tries to show a timeline of the impact and its consequences. If you watch very closely, you'll also see that it respects the true paleogeography of the era: when it pans over the 'Yucatan' area (point of impact), it shows it as it was, underwater, along with the middle sea of North America.
KT Asteroid Impact [Animation]
URL <http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1226636845358052872>
The second — the one I was able to find when first writing this post — is a YouTube video uploaded by Art Techuk (and purportedly from NASA) which offers some incredible animations of the ELE that took out the dinosaurs 65 mya and what we might do to prevent a similar catastrophe:
Earth Impact [Animation]
URL <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbXDRJtL3d8>
While I think these are the two best, with a little exploration on GoogleVideo and YouTube, you'll find a half dozen more, each with something interesting to offer. (There are many truly amateur videos by kids that show that creativity, imagination and the inspiration of this subject matter are all alive and well.)
Good digging!
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