apex predator: An animal at the top of the food chain. Such predators also have no predators themselves.
atomic: Having to do with atoms, the smallest possible unit that makes up a chemical element.
biologist: A scientist involved in the study of living things.
birds: Warm-blooded animals with wings that first showed up during the time of the dinosaurs. Birds are jacketed in feathers and produce young from the eggs they deposit in some sort of nest. Most birds fly, but throughout history there have been the occasional species that don’t.
dimension: Descriptive features of something that can be measured, such as length, width or time.
dinosaur: A term that means terrible lizard. These reptiles emerged around 243 million years ago. All descended from egg-laying reptiles known as archosaurs. Their descendants eventually split into two lines. For many decades, they have been distinguished by their hips. The lizard-hipped line are believed to have led to the saurischians, such as two-footed theropods like T. rex and the lumbering four-footed Apatosaurus. A second line of so-called bird-hipped, or ornithischian dinosaurs, appears to have led to a widely differing group of animals that included the stegosaurs and duckbilled dinosaurs. Many large dinosaurs died out around 66 million years ago. But some saurischians lived on. They are now the birds we see today (and who have now evolved that so-called “bird-hipped” pelvis).
fire: The burning of some fuel, creating a flame that releases light and heat. (in neuroscience) The activation of a nerve or neural pathway.
fuel: Any material that will release energy during a controlled chemical or nuclear reaction. Fossil fuels (coal, natural gas and petroleum) are a common type that liberate their energy through chemical reactions that take place when heated (usually to the point of burning).
gizzard: A thick-walled part of a bird’s stomach that is used for grinding food. It may contain grit or…
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