A+Day+In+Evolution…Or+A+Couple+At+Least

Rach Podtburg May 21, 2012 Mrs. Dabrush L&L Section 4

A Day In Evolution…Or A Couple At Least “AAAAAHHHHH!”, I scream as I fly by the huge, tropical trees. “Man, I thought this day couldn’t get weirder!” Okay, let’s back up to the start of my day, or has it been more? At the start of today, I was being a normal student, doing my science homework on evolution and the geologic time scale. “MOM! Can you help me with my evolution homework? All week, in class, we’ve been learnin’ ‘bout the stupid history of Earth, and I have learned nothing! I’m too busy falling asleep to the movies we watch in class,” I mumbled to my mom as she walked in the living room with my steaming hot veggie dumplings. “Sweetie, you have to try first, you can’t just give up like that,” she snaps her fingers in the middle of the sentence,”And plus, evolution is really interesting. It’s about how the Earth we know today, has changed,” she continued as she sat down next to me glancing at my homework. “Ya, I know that, but it’s boring just readin’ textbooks on it, or looking at websites. WITH NO PICTURES, might I add,” I complained as I shoved the pale dumpling into my mouth and chewed. As I chewed, I finally thought about how cool it would be to actually live with the ancient life that use to be on this planet! I mean, it would be going to the Hall of Fame, but for creatures. That thought kept running through my head until my mom asked me if I was okay. I said I was fine and then told her about the fantasy I had just had. “Wouldn’t it be cool if people today, could go back to when life started to evolve?! We could see our great, great, great… a million greats grandfather! Or grandmother, ya know, depending on the gender,” I turned to her with huge eyes and a wondering look on my face. “Steph, that would be amazing to do that, but we can’t time travel, we can’t look into the past, we can’t do any of that! It’s great that you have such a large imagination, but honey, it’s just not possible,” my mom told me crushing my delicate spirits. “Ya,” I sighed. “I know, I just wish that it was possible. Ya know, like in the realm of reality.” I slowly picked up all of my books and slugged upstairs. As I past the stench filled, stained, graffitied area, that was my brother’s room, I noticed something I hadn’t ever before. “Had it been there all this time?” I thought to my self. “Had I really been so focused on something else to not notice it for 14 years of my life, or had it just appeared today?” I slowly walked over, trying not to creek the floor boards. My mom did not like my brother and I to go over where their room was because we tend to be very accident prone. I creeped forward, very quietly, and then the worst thing happened, my my brother stepped out of his room and stared straight at me! “What are you doing?” he whispered so mom wouldn’t hear us. ”You know we’re not allowed over on this side of the house!” <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“I know, I know, but I just noticed this room back here because the door was cracked open” I explained as Chase glared at me like I had a third head. Not that I have two. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Really?! It’s just a room, it’s nothin’ special. For all we know, it could be filled with dad’s worthless stuff,” he snapped at me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well what, you don’t wanna see what’s in the room? Your not even a little curious?” I asked him completely expecting a very enthusiastic answer. Two seconds of thinking, and Chase grunted and came with my tip-toeing closer to the room. We both stopped in our tracks as we both gently pushed to door open. Both of us couldn’t see anything from where we were standing so we went in, I was right behind Chase. Once we stepped in the room, the temperature suddenly dropped from the normal, 72ºF to an even 50ºF, or at least that what it said on the thermostat. There were no windows on any of the bare white walls, and the room seemed a lot bigger then I thought it was going to be. My brother and I looked around and we instantly started to touch everything inside the room. There were gadgets with blinking lights, swirly designs, things made out of glass, wood, cement, and there was even something with a large fossilized tooth on it. Naturally, since it had something sharp on it, Chase went straight for that one, and naturally I followed. This huge gadget was the biggest in the room. It has the shape of a large lamp, about the size of a human, I think a little taller. We both started flipping some switches and pushing buttons. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">Five minutes of button pushing, switch flipping, and lever pulling, we finally got it to turn on. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“YES!” I whispered and screamed at the same time, remembering that I wasn’t suppose to be in here. “I think we finally got it to turn on! Come on, let’s see what it does!” <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Uuummm… okay, sure” my brother unsure of what he had accepted to was following me into the contraption. We pushed the big red button on the side because in all of the cartoons that we have seen in the past 14 years, the ON button is always big and red. We were waiting for a while, but then something finally begun. Lights were flashing, and thingy-ma-bobbers were spinning, and just like that we’re out cold. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“*Moan*, oh my god, what happened?!”, I mumbled to myself, not knowing that my brother was right next to me.”AH! Geez, why’d you scare me like that?!” I screeched as I shoved him further down in the ground. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Ow, god what’s…your…probleeeemmmm… WHERE ARE WE!?”, he asked has he slowed down his speaking pace. “What the heck, there’s no trees, no rivers, no nothing.” <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“What are you talking…about…”, I stopped in my tracks, well my speaking tracks, I was still on the ground. I was trying to finish my sentence, but I couldn’t. I looked up and there were no clouds, the sky wasn’t blue, and the trees weren’t green(well there were no trees). I took it all in with my brother right beside me, the massive oceans that were as dark as the midnight sky, and everything that was different from what we knew to be Earth. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Where’s the room full of the gadgets?”, Chase asked before starting to explore. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“I don’t know. HEY, where are you going? Don’t you think we should stay put?”, I shouted to him while he was walking further and further away from me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, that’s not going to give us any answers, now is it?”, he asked me, knowing that I was going to try a answer the question even though it was intended not to be. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Ugh, do you always have to be right, let me be right for once in your life!”, I yelled at him as a ran ahead to catch up. My brother and I were both pretty tall so we were both usually walking fast, but this time was different. On our normal strolls in the park, we saw pairs of squirrels running after each other because one of them took the other’s acorn. We usually saw a fancy poodle peeing where it wasn’t supposed to be. We usually saw the little kids feeding the ducks in the pond pieces of bread that their parents had bought for them. Well, that wasn’t exactly what we saw today. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Woah, woah, woah. What are you doing?”, Chase asked me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Going into the water, it feels really nice, come on,” I snapped back. “You said yourself that we are not going to find any answers if we stay in one spot, so I’m going in the water. I am a good swimmer after all.” <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“*Sigh*, okay, go on in, but don’t come crying to me if there’s something in there that you’re scared of,” he told me with a very rare expression on his face. Right in that moment, he was actually worried about me, his little sister, the one he always got in trouble for the things that he did! <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">I stuck my head under the water a opened my eyes. It was amazing down there! There were little horseshoe crab-like animals swimming around everywhere! I remembered at that moment, that I had seen one before, but it was in my science book. Under the picture, it said trilobite. On the bottom, or at least the deepest that I could see, there were little yellow tubes that were attached to the ground, with one hole at the end of it. I popped my head out of the water for a breath and I was going to look back down, but my brother stopped me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“What?”, I asked him <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“What was down there? Was there anything scary?”, Chase asked me with a hopeful, yet frightened tone. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“”No. If there was I would have popped my head out earlier screaming.”, I barked. I took a deep breathe and stuck my head back under. My long, dirty blond hair moved slowly into my line of vision, yet I didn’t know it was my hair. My heart started beating faster until I finally realized it was just that, my hair. I was looking for something that I hadn’t seen before in my first look under water, I didn’t see anything new. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, there’s really nothin’ down there, just some sponges and some…’”, I paused and started to think <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“And what?! Finish your sentence dude!”, Chase screamed at me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“And trilobites. But that’s impossible, they went extinct during the Permian Period, 245 million years ago!”, I said with a great deal of concern. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“What are you saying?”, he asked me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“I’m saying that that contraption that we were playin’ with either brought us back in time or it’s made what Earth looked like, 5.5 million years ago.” <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We both sat down on the brown, dusty ground thinking about what I had said. Five minutes past and neither of us had said anything. I looked up at my brother and it looked like he was ready to burst into tears. I had never seen him like this, EVER! I was starting to worry, but then my brother saw me looking at him and he took the face of a very buff and brave man. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Chase, are you okay?”, I asked him sincerely, like I had never done before. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“*Sigh* No. Steph, I’m scared. What if we really did go back in time? I mean, the whole world has changed. What if we can’t get back to our era?”, he asked me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Look, after a while, everything is going to catch up to speed and be back in our time,” I told Chase. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“How do you know that things won’t change? Ya know, if things will turn out different in the future,” he questioned. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, I don’t, but in Science Class we just learned about evolution and as long as we don’t touch anything or make anything go extinct that is not supposed to, then we should be fine,” I ensured my big brother. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">After my small, reassuring, mini speech, we began to walk around again. Nothing much had changed other then the fact that it was now day. The whole planet Earth looked different. The skies were bright blue, and clear for the most part. The sun was shinning brightly as is slowly rose higher and higher in the morning sky. We both finally saw the really world when the first creatures were becoming complex. The sand didn’t look like ugly dirt in the sunlight and we were able to see far into the distance until the sky and land merged into one blurred line. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“WOW! Look at this place! It’s beautiful with no skyscrapers in the way of the view, and no pollution to fog up the sky!”, I said as I took the sights in. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Ya, it is amazing!”, Chase agreed. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We stood there, quietly, not saying anything. We had nothing to say. We were boggled, and fascinated at the same time and we didn’t know what to do. Then, I remembered what I did yesterday! <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“LET’S GO SWIMMING! Come on, there’s nothing scary down there. Plus, the water’s now clear and we can see straight through it,” I pleaded to Chase. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Ugh, fine. You did only say that there were only a couple clam and some harmless trilobites, so sure, let’s go!” Chase agreed and followed me into the cold water. We slowly submerged our bodies into the cold, crystal clear water. We watched the shimmer of the surface go wash away when we ducked our heads underwater. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We both opened our eyes, underwater, at the same time and we were so surprised at what we saw. There were other creatures that were thriving under the waves beside the small organisms that I told Chase about earlier. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Oh my gosh! That was amazing down there!” Chase screamed when he got his head above the water. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Totally! It’s like the history of Earth is going by faster and evolution has sped up!”, I told him, being ever so proud because of the science-y stuff I had just said. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">All of the creatures down in the water had completely evolved! The trilobites were fewer than before. Also, there were the beginnings of fish, but these fish had no teeth due to the fact that there wasn’t any need for them and the lack of predators. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">The two of us went back down, underwater, to explore some more. We were probably swimming for hours, with no breaks on land. We would come up for air every two minutes or so to get air, but other then that we were always underwater checking out what other beneficial traits had stayed and what had developed. I found out that most of the animals and other organisms were still invertebrates, but the ancestors of fish had just started to evolve so that gave us a hint for what period of time we were both in in the Geologic Time Scale. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Wait, if fish are just starting to evolve then I think I know when, in Earth’s history, we are in,” I thought out loud, not knowing that I was actually speaking. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“What? How do you know what period were are in?” Chase asked. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, since there aren’t any plants above the water AND there aren’t any jawed fish SO we must be in the Paleozoic Era and the Ordovician Period of that era.”, I insisted. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“How the heck do you know that?” <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Umm, I’m learning it in science. It’s actually really interesting,” I told my big brother. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, since you know that, then how the heck did the organisms evolve so fast? Didn’t it take like, millions of years to do that the first time?” Chase screamed in my face hoping for an understandable answer. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Maybe it’s just a simulation that speeds up evolution?”, I sassed him with that because of the sass he gave me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Oh,” Chase was astounded that I could have figured that out. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">It was dark out by the time we figured out that we were in a simulation of Earth’s past, so we decided to get some sleep so we would be ready to explore more the next day. As the sky got darker, we both watched the stars start to appear and the sun disappear over the horizon. The sky got darker and darker until it was as black as my little puppy-dog, Gigi, back home and we fell asleep soon after the moon rose. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">The next morning, I watched the sun rise over the ocean. The sun played games with the blue sky, turning it different shades of red and orange. The water shimmered and I saw the small fish under the waves, so I decided to go for a short swim. I took off my shoes and jumped right in. The water was a little cold, but I got used to it quickly because my mind was on the fish instead. I swam all the way to the bottom and sat down in the sand, looking every which way at the different types of organisms when I ran out of air and had to go back to the surface. When I reached the surface and finally had some time to think, I noticed that there was more variety of fish, and that they had jaws! <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Oh cool, evolution of the fish happened over night!…Wait, that means…AHHHHHH!”, I screamed and swam as fast as I could out of the water and far on to the land. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“WHAT!?”, Chase concerned enough to wake up fully, flung his body up onto his feet. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Umm, the fish, ya know, the ones that were jawless? Well, they developed jaws! And teeth!”, I screamed into his face. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“So?” <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“So? SO?! So, that means that the fish were threatened with a predator, which means there is a predator in those waters!”, I was so concerned that I could sit still. I was jittery. I wasn’t me. I was usually very calm in situations similar to the height of this one. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, why don’t we just not go into the water?”, Chase suggested calmly. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“That’s fine for now, BUT, during evolution, things change for a reason. Usually it is because they need an easier way to live their lives. I remember in class, we learned about the giant sea scorpions, eurypterids, and they eventually crawl onto land because the sea becomes too hard of a life and they are not safe there. So, if evolution is being sped up, then there is not much more time until we are in the Devonian and Carboniferous Period,” I told him and afterwards he had a blank look on his face. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“So, the giant scorpions will reach land and they will attack us if we don’t come up with something soon?”. Chase finally got what I was saying. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We both thought for a while and then we finally came up with an idea. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Wait, when do they come on land?”, Chase asked. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“I just said the Devonian or the Carboniferous, were you not listening?”, I questioned. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, if those small plants turn into the Devonian forests, then we could climb up those trees and we would be safe, right?”, Chase, for once, suggested something rather smart. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We both looked at each other with a “lightbulb look”. We hadn’t really thought about what would have happened to us if we got hurt, or something along the lines of that, in the simulation. We also hadn’t thought about what would happen if we had made a species go extinct, so we had a lot more to think about then what we had been thinking about before. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“So, how long does it take for the trees to appear?”, Chase asked. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“All we have to do is wait, I don’t know how fast evolution is going in this thing,” I excitedly said. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">Chase and I waited for what seemed like days, but it was only a couple of hours. We both were playing with the sand, building sand castles with elaborate designs for the windows and doors, and small flags made from the stem of a plant that we found close by. We made villages and small rivers that surrounded the sand castles, and, being myself, I got bored. I finally got up and carefully stuck my head underwater to see how evolution was doing. I knew that I took a long time in real life, but in the simulator, it took only a few hours for the previous developments to occur. I was puzzled why this was delaying, but I wasn’t all that worried. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Hey, do you think the eurypterids came up on shore already, but in a different spot then where we are? That would explain the lack of them underwater, and up here,” I suggested to my brother while he was trying to get the sand out of his pants. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Ya, I guess that could have happened. But then why haven’t the trees developed large trunks and think branches?” Chase wondered, hoping that I knew the answer. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, I did say that the trees developed AROUND the same time as the giant scorpions invaded land, so there is a possibility that it’s just not time yet Chase.” <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We both sat down again, but this time on the soft soil that was placed on underneath the developing plants. Since we were in a simulation, we did not notice the change in the levels of oxygen, but the plant matter certainly did. The soon-to-be trees spread out their stocks so they could soak in more oxygen. Due to the environmental changes, these plants were growing to adjust, like any other living organism would. The trees got taller and taller and the trunks got thinker so they could support the extra weight. Chase and I both noticed them growing right behind us and we knew that it meant the eurypterids were coming. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Come on, lets climb up the trees to be safe. Ya know from the huge scorpions,” I shouted towards him. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, that might be able to hold them off for a bit, but these trees don’t have any bark, there’ no need for it right now for their survival. Can’t the scorpions bash into the tree and easily knock it over?” Chase was questioning whether I knew what I was doing or not. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Once the eurypterids do come up on land and over to the trees there will be a reason to develop bark on them, which is when the evolution of trees comes into play.” I instead my brother that everything would be fine. I had been learning about this for weeks in science class, and since there was a quiz coming up, I had already studied. All of the interesting material, that is. We quickly scurried up the trees, as it was growing, ever so slowly. I found a branch of my own, and Chase just kept on hanging on to the trunk. Sitting there, on the branches was very boring, picking at the leaves, and running my finger over the smooth surface of the trunk. The plants were starting to develop the bark that was needed, so we braced ourselves by hugging the tree nice and tight. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Oh my gosh, I’m so scared. What if the tree isn’t strong enough?” Chase wondered. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Then we fall to the ground, get up and run for our lives,” I answered my brother with a little humor to lighten the mood. It didn’t work. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We dangle from the tree limbs watching the eurypterids roam the floor below us. They now were getting smaller because of the lack of food there was on land at that time. They patrolled the waters edge waiting for the fish to stroll right into their ambush on their way to their breeding waters. The fish glided, in the water, into the small fresh water stream that lead up to a small, disconnected pool of water. The fish approached the strip of land that stood between them and the breeding grounds. We both watched the fish jump out of the water and onto the land for two seconds and then quickly try to reach the pool of water, The first couple made it, but soon many other eurypterids saw the fiasco of fish and wanted some food of their own. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">My brother and I must have fallen asleep in the tree because we woke up and I saw Chase fall off of the limb that he was grasping on to. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Hey! You okay down there?”, I shouted down to my brother. He gave me two thumbs up and got back on his feet. “Do you think you can catch me if I jump, or should I climb down?” I asked, hoping he would say that he could catch me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“No, I can’t catch you from that high up. Try climbing down,” he politely asked me, which was very unusual due to the brother -sister, love-hate relationship we were rockin’ our whole lives. I climbed down to the second lowest ring of branches and looked into the forest to see how it had changed over the night. Not much had changed in the way it looked, plant wise, but the animals were a whole different story. The crossover from a marine ecosystem to a terrestrial ecosystem had changed and only a few miles from where we were, a family of amphibians were resting in a fresh water spring. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Oh cool, amphibians are just over there!”, Chase shouted. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Ya, they evolved from the fish’s fins getting strong enough to hold up their body weight and they formed the first limbs. Also, where their lungs are, the fish’s swim-bladder use to occupy the space,” I told my brother as he examined the amphibians from afar. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We both wanted to go in two separate directions, I wanted to go explore the forest, but my brother wanted to see the amphibians. An agreement was settled that the amphibians couldn’t wait and the forest could. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">Our footsteps were quiet as we walked closer and closer to the spectacular creatures. The closest we got was a few yards away, and I could finally see exactly what they were at that distance. The Acanthostegas were in a small family of five and they were all in the water trying to stay cool. We watched them for 10 minutes without them noticing that we were there. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“We should probably leave them alone now, they finally noticed us and I don’t want them to lose there natural ways.” I started to walk away, motioning Chase to come with. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We walked in the direction that we came from, following the wet, sandy foot-prints in the ground. Once we got to the forest’s edge, we had to take our shoes off, due to the swamp-like features that it had. We entered the swamp forest and stepped into shallow water. There were a lot of arachnids everywhere around us and there was a hand-full of amphibians swimming through our legs and circling around us as Chase and I walked. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“WOW! This place is amazing! I wish our Earth could look like this,” Chase said with much enthusiasm. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“I know right. Then again, there was a reason that people were not around now,” I said. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Really? Steph, there isn’t anything that could possibly hurt humans…WOW!”, Chase stopped in the middle of his sentence and stared at something behind me. I turned around and there it was, a huge, six-foot dragonfly hovering a foot away from my face. I stood still for what seemed like forever, waiting for it to fly off so I wouldn’t get eaten. That didn’t happen. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">The water was getting colder as I was standing still in the water staring at the giant insect. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Chase, can you please do something about this, I have been standing here for ten minutes doing nothing?” I pleaded for Chase to get rid of the bug. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Sure, give me a sec, though,” Chase sunk into the murky water and swam right past the dragonfly. He grabbed a stick from the ground and waved it at me. He then motioned to me to duck so I did slowly and the next thing you know, he throws the stick at the insect and flies off to the top of the trees. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Wow, thanks!” I said to my brother and we quickly ran out of the swamp and back to out lovely, safe, and familiar tree. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">It was now getting quite dark out so we headed up the tree on to the middle branches. I took the branches that faced away from the swamp because I didn’t want to get carried away by a huge dragonfly or cockroach and my brother was brave a took the ones that faced the swamp. I started to close my eyes to go to sleep when I saw something large creature that moved like the wind. At that point I was too tired to do anything about it, so I went to sleep and tried to forget about it. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">The next morning everything looked different. It seemed like we had left the Carboniferous Period and began the Permian. Most of the coal forest had turned into large groups of conifer trees and the giant insects were gone. In place of the insects, very fast moving reptiles had evolved from the amphibians replacing the wet, slimy skin with dry and waterproof skin. This helped the reptiles been more active and they were able to explore more. Also, the reptile’s skeleton evolved so that it was lighter which allowed the animals to move much faster and quieter, and the predators could not catch them as easily. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Woah, these reptiles are huge!” Chase told me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Ya, I know! Hey, let’s climb down and see what they’re like!” I shouted over to Chase as I was climbing down the tree. When I finally reached the ground I saw so many different things at once, I couldn’t take it all in at once. I knew that there was a major climate change that made all of the tropical areas deserts and that reptiles had dominated the land, but I had never imagined what it would look like or what the animals themselves looked like. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Steph, why do the reptiles have those sails on their backs?”,Chase asked me trying to touch one. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">I grabbed his hand and pulled it away from the reptile. “Well, due to the extremes in the temperatures, evolution has given the reptiles a way to regulate their body temperature. They do this by using their sail, made a of blood filled layer of skin between each set of bones. When they point the sail towards the sun, it soak up all of the heat energy from the sun and when the sun is not hitting it, the reptile is able to cool off,” I explained to Chase. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Oh cool. Is that where present reptiles got their body temperature regulation?”Chase was bombarding me with questions. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Exactly!” I said. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">Once Chase stopped asking questions, I finally started to explore and see other sites then what I could see from the tree that we have stayed so close to. As I wandered off, I saw reptiles such as Dimetrodon, that has a sail, and Dicynodon, without a sail. Chase and I spent hours studying what they ate, how they behaved, and how the females differed from the males. The reptiles were all very interesting until they all began to sit down and sleep. I was a bit confused because it was no where near dark, but I then assumed that the species of reptiles must have a “timer” in their biological clock that go off to tell them to take a quick nap around noon time. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Look at that! They all started to go to sleep at about the same time! That’s so cool!” I exclaimed. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Ya! That is cool. Maybe we should do the same to make sure that we keep up our energy levels up,” Chase suggested. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We both walked back over to our tree and climbed up, with the rough bark digging into our palms. It took a good five minutes or so to climb up. As I approach my limbs, I stop to get in the right position in order to not hurt myself. I finally got onto my branch and lied down to take my nap. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">It seemed as though Chase and I took about a two hour nap. ”Wow, what time is it?”, I asked Chase as I stretched out from my nap. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t known the time since we got in this simulation!”, Chase screamed his answer back at me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, sorry. I didn’t know that you were so sensitive about the subject,” I apologized sarcastically to him. “*Sigh*, I’m gonna go back down and see what the marine life is like. I haven’t been down there for a while and since the eurypterids are out of the water, we have nothing to worry about,” I told my brother my plans and hopped out of the tree and walked down to the shore. I was excited to get back in the water. As I approached the water’s edge, the sand got wetter and my feet squished out the water with each step I took. With the sand between my toes, I jumped in the shimmering blue water and went below the water’s surface. Underneath the waves, I saw a huge surprise. Almost all of the marine life had disappeared from existence. There were no longer any trilobites that used to roam around the ocean. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Oh my gosh, what happened?”, I thought to my self when I came up for air. I swam back to the shore I told my brother what I saw. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“What do you mean almost all of the marine invertebrates are gone?”, Chase asked nervously. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“I think that was the end of the Permian Period extinction,” I told Chase, thinking real hard to remember what I had learned in class. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“So. What does that mean?”, Chase asked. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“THAT means that the dinosaurs will soon be evolving and we are gonna be in big trouble!”, I screamed at the top of my lungs to make sure that my message got across. We were both in panic mode at that point and we scurried back to out tree and climbed up as fast as possible. We sat there waiting for the dinosaurs to develop and they soon did, but the animals weren’t the only things that were changing. Many of the trees changed from being conifers to palm-like trees and ginko trees. That change in foliage included the tree that Chase and I were sitting on. Many of the branches stayed, but the type of branch changed. All of the leaves changed and Chase and I were hanging on for our lives. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“What the heck! I hate this place now!” I screamed, still with my fingers gripping the large branch. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Well, once the developments come to a standstill, we should be fine again, so try to hang in there.”, Chase commented. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">The two of us were hanging in there for a good ten minutes more. The evolution period finally stopped and we got to haul ourselves up on our branches again. We looked out to the world that we got to know and everything was different. There were the first turtles and crocodiles, the first dinosaurs, the first mammals, and the climate changed once again to an even hotter climate. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Look at all of the little mammals running around,” Chase pointed out. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Ya they’re so cute! And small!”, I exclaimed. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Isn’t it because the dinosaurs would not allow the mammals to evolve because the younger generations kept on dying off too quickly for them to mate and create genetic mutations?”, Chase asked to make sure that he was right. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Yup, pretty much! And once the dinosaurs die off, the mammals can then evolve and develop into the modern human,” I added on to his brilliance. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“So, what do we do now?”, Chase wondered, and as usual he came to me for fun ideas. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna go down there when the dinos aren’t around. You wanna come?” My suggestion scared Chase a little. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“*Sigh*, ya sure I’ll come with,” Chase responded to my question. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We waited for a good time to go down there to see the small, prairie dog-like mammals. The time finally came and it was just before dark. All of the Coelophysises went to bed and the coast was clear. I climbed down first and my brother followed me down to where we saw the mammals. Since the small mammal could only come out at night, this was a perfect time to do this. We watched the small mammals for half an hour and then we walked back to our tree. We both were about to climb up the tree, but something caught my attention. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Hey, what’s over there in the forest?”,I asked my brother. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Looks like a sleeping dinosaur, why?” I always hated it when Chase answered my question with another. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“I want to see it up close, come on!”, I whispered and shouted simultaneously. We crept closer and closer to the giant creatures, but it wasn’t like one that we saw earlier that day, it was a new dinosaur. That meant that a period must have gone by and new dinosaurs were developing. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“What type is this one?”, Chase questioned me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“It’s pretty large, and it has huge teeth. It reminds me of a…”, I stopped. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“A what?” <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“A T-rex skeleton that I saw in the museum!”, I shouted forgetting that a tyrannosaurus rex was sleeping a few feet from us. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“SHHHHH!”, Chase covered my mouth. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We started to walk away and then we heard a grunt and a snort. We turned around and we saw a bright yellow eye that was a foot or more in diameter. The pupil of the eye narrowed as it focused in on the two of us. We stopped in our tracks and stared right back at the scaly beast. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Tip-toe quietly backwards, Steph,” Chase whispered in my ear and I followed his command. We backed up slowly, but that wasn’t good enough, the t-rex saw us moved and perked its head up. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“What do we do now?!”, I asked frantically. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Umm, I would run to the tree and climb it as high as I can!”, He screamed at me. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">We both made a run for the tree. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“AAAAAHHHHH!”, I scream as I fly by the huge, tropical trees. “Man, I thought this day couldn’t get weirder!” The wind was blowing my hair back, and the ground was beginning to hurt my feet. The t-rex was right behind us and we were about to get caught when the best thing happened. The simulation stopped and within a few minutes we were back in the small room that got us into the simulation in the first place. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“What were you guy thinking?! Coming into this room and actually using one of these gadgets!”, Our dad was screaming at us and when he was done, he was crying. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Why are you crying, we’re fine, Dad,”I insisted Dad that we weren’t hurt or anything along the lines. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“I was just worried that you guys were hurt while you were in there!”, Dad told us while hugging us tight. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“We’re sorry, Dad. We saw the room and we could resist. It was kinda tempting and while we were in there, Steph and I had a lot of fun!”, Chase told Dad. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">“Ya, it’s true. Also, I learned a lot from actually seeing how everything happened in evolution and it finally showed why developments happened in Earth’s history because of the environmental changes!” I hugged Dad and thanked him for the much needed lesson.
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//<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 150%;">“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.” -Charles Darwin //

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">Process Journal <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">Evolution Poem