Friday, October 29, 2010

GeoJeopardy! Fridays

Time for GeoJeopardy! Fridays, because who is really doing anything today.
- Dinosaurs -

Anatosaurus was this type of dinosaur named for a feature it shared with the platypus

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Guinness says the smallest one of these among the dinos was the walnut-sized one of the 30-foot stegosaurus

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The BBC's "Truth About Killer Dinosaurs" staged a fight between T. rex & this 3-horned beast
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Patagosaurus thrived on this continent 160 to 170 million years ago

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Also a type of modern bird, this word follows "ovi" & "Utah" in dinosaur names

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Friday, October 22, 2010

GeoJeopardy! Friday

Time for GeoJeopardy! Fridays, because who can't use a little trivia while you're not doing work. I didn't know one again this week, so how you compare.

- Geology -

This rock from Georgia was used to sculpt the statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial
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Crude oil can be extracted from this rock, the most abundant sedimentary rock in the Earth's crust

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The Hawaiian islands consist mostly of this hard, dark volcanic rock

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Due to its luster, German miners gave this "pleasant" rock its name, which means "spark"

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The Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown is the tallest structure in the U.S. made entirely of this
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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Star Wars meets Paleontology - Halloween edition

So coming across this the other day I felt I needed to repost this here. It is for the ILM Halloween party where they turned familiar Star Wars characters into skeletons. The point that I am making as a paleo post is if you look at a few of them, they look a lot like something out of our paleontology text books.



The two in particular that I feel I should point out are the AT-AT-Mammoth mix and the X-Wing-Pterodactyl mix (enlarged below).



Friday, October 15, 2010

GeoJeopardy! Fridays

Time for GeoJeopardy! Fridays, because who can't use a little trivia while you're not doing work. I didn't know one, see how you do.

- Dinosaurs -

Although its name suggests that it had 5 of these, the Pentaceratops had just 3; 2 were merely enlarged cheekbones

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Scientists believe that dinosaurs lived through 3 geologic periods: Triassic, Jurassic, then this next one
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The name Psittacosaurus means this type of lizard; it had a strong beak like that on this present-day bird
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High levels of this metal, at. #77, in rocks near dinosaur fossils led to the asteroid theory of their demise
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Similar to an Apatosaurus, this 52'-tall herbivore whose name means "arm lizard" had longer forelegs than hindlegs

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Friday, October 08, 2010

GeoJeopardy! Fridays

Time for GeoJeopardy! Fridays, because who can't use a little trivia while you're not doing work.

- Geology -

The mineral Andalusite was discovered in & named for a region in this country

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Fluvial is a term that refers to these geographic features

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Granite is composed mainly of feldspar & this transparent crystalline material

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A 79 A.D. letter about the death of this "Elder" scientist had the first accurate description of a volcanic eruption

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In 1812 this German scientist devised a scale to measure the hardness of minerals

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