Audio
ETE - A Drying Landscape audio description
Transcript
Text: Approximately 204 to 201 million years ago, a drying landscape.
Description: Beneath the title, a bright illustration of a prehistoric environment spans the exhibit panel. It shows a shallow pool of water dotted with thin, segmented reeds and leafy, green aquatic plants, which have red flowers on a spike. In the pool, a large reptile is taking down a smaller, furry animal while a frog leaps away. The muddy shores of the pool show the footprints of a dinosaur and the ripple pattern of the water. A tree leans over the pool, standing out against a bright blue sky with sparse clouds. Various prehistoric plants and animals are scattered around the scene, including a small herd of long-necked animals, several four-legged creatures with long striped tails, and a small, iguana-like reptile emerging from under hand-shaped leaves.
Text: Drying floodplains and shrinking rivers. The layers of mud and sandstone that form the Moenave Formation span approximately 4 million years of time. Evidence found in these layers tell us that there were major changes in the landscape and climate. Dinosaurs may have lived with these changes better than other groups of Triassic animals.
Description: To the right of this text is a globe showing the supercontinent Pangea with a yellow arrow pointing to where Zion National Park would be at this time in the Late Triassic. Next to the globe is a large green arrow pointing upwards, matching the direction of North America’s continental drift.
Text: Heading north. Continental drift moved North America from the wet tropics into a dry belt.
As North America continued to drift further north into temperate climates, it became cooler, drier, and more seasonal. What were once big rivers and expansive floodplains shrank to seasonal streams and lakes; old growth forests became fragmented woodlands, arid scrublands, and desert sand dunes. Changing environments meant changes in animal and plant life, with some species dwindling as a result.
Description: A chart on a purple background labeled “Lower Dinosaur Canyon Paleoclimatic Trend” shows three different lines spanning from 203.8 million years ago to 201.8 years ago. A light blue line for precipitation shows a slight decrease, from 50 centimeters to 40 centimeters of average annual precipitation. A grey line filled with dark arrows shows no change from 2000 parts per million atmospheric carbon dioxide. A red line with white stripes shows a slight increase from 24 degrees Celsius to 27 degrees Celsius average annual temperature. A note at the bottom indicates that modern atmospheric carbon dioxide is 427 parts per million.
Text: Note that this graph spans 2 million years.
As the climate dried, some Triassic animals went extinct, but these environmental changes were about to become much more dramatic. Small dinosaur footprints are among rare fossils found in the Dinosaur Canyon Member of the Moenave Formation, indicating that small dinosaurs managed to survive in these harsher environments. As other Triassic animals struggled, many habitats and ecological roles were left vacant, allowing space for new dinosaurs to eventually evolve into them
Description: A photo of three people hiking up a steep cliff. The cliff is composed of red dirt and dotted with sparse shrubs.
Text: Dr. Celina Suarez and her team survey for rocks to sample in the Dinosaur Canyon Member of the Moenave Formation. Very few fossils have ever been found in the Dinosaur Canyon Member, but the chemistry of its rocks help us to understand the ancient climate.
Description: The bottom left corner of the exhibit shows an illustration of a long phytosaur skull sitting half-buried in dry, cracking red dirt. On the dirt are skeletons of dead fish along with fresh footprints from a dinosaur, whose distant silhouette is blurred by a mirage. In the background, a forest fire is visible.
Description
Audio description of Panel 3 of the End Triassic Extinction exhibit
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