Audio
ETE - Thriving Tropical Wetlands audio description
Transcript
Text: approximately 227 to 205 million years ago. Thriving tropical wetlands.
Description: Below the panel’s title is a large illustration of a prehistoric environment, full of plants and animals in and around a body of water. The body of water has a variety of colorful fish and a large, alligator-like animal with its long mouth lined by sharp teeth. Above, on the muddy shores, are a variety of other prehistoric animals eating, drinking, fighting, and resting. Further offshore are tall trees, ferns, and segmented plants with thin leaves. A winged animal flies overhead against a cloudy, dark sky.
Text: Mudstones and sandstones are our first clues about the environment that deposited the Chinle Formation. Logs from tall conifer trees, leaves from moisture-loving ferns, and a wide variety of other plant life are commonly found fossilized in these layers of sand and mud. Fossils of fish, giant amphibians, and large prehistoric reptiles including semi-aquatic phytosaurs also give us hints about the Late Triassic environment.
The Late Triassic environment was shaped by meandering rivers and seasonal floods that formed wetlands and ponds teeming with life in a warm, wet, and tropical climate.
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.
Text: A drifting continent. Over 22 million years, the continent slowly drifter further north into a warmer, more arid climate. Geochemical evidence indicates that the climate was changing while the Chinle Formation was being deposited, but it was changing slowly, which allowed animals and plants time to adapt.
Description: A chart on a purple background labeled “Chinle Paleoclimatic Trend” shows three different lines spanning from 224 million years ago to 208 years ago. The blue line for “precipitation” begins high on the chart but ends much lower. This shows the change from 200 centimeters to 40 centimeters of average annual precipitation. A gray line with dark arrows shows an increase from 420 parts per million to 2000 parts per million atmospheric carbon dioxide. A red line with white stripes shows a gradual change from 20 degrees Celsius to 24 degrees Celsius average annual temperature. A note at the bottom reads, “Modern atmospheric carbon dioxide = 427 parts per million”.
Text: Note that this graph spans 16 million years.
Description: Beneath the chart is a pack of six long-tailed dinosaurs, all of which are walking on two legs.
Text: Where are all the dinosaurs? While the Chinle Formation preserves many prehistoric reptiles, only a few were dinosaurs. As other groups of Triassic reptiles went extinct, small dinosaurs, like these Coelophysis survived. (pronounced: see-lo-fie-sis)
Description: Two photos on the left show a pair of scientists in a rocky field sitting next to a large white cast. The cast is wrapped around a long skull.
Text: Paleontologists Don DiBlieux and Andrew Milner excavating the phytosaur skull featured in this exhibit from the Chinle Formation.
Description: A white magnifying glass labeled “Junior Paleontologist” sits just beneath the photo of the wrapped phytosaur skull.
Text: Can you find the phytosaur lurking in the illustration above?
Description
Audio description of Panel 2 of the End Triassic Extinction exhibit.
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