Churchill Science

Recently scientists found a fossil of an ancient turtle in China. They are using it to try to figure out how the first turtles grew shells. This is a picture of what the first turtles with shells might have looked like.

Click here to read the original article, from National Geographic. The name of the species is Odontochelys semitestacea.

Ever since we played this game in class, kids have been trying to beat the highest score. Some of you have posted saying you got “99999999999999999999999999999″… OK, well, this is Lisa’s top score. 98 points! If you were able to beat it (for real) post here and tell us how!

To answer Owen’s comment: I know of one other game a little bit like this one. But it’s not about ecosystems. It’s about planets! We’ll play it when we study about space.

Here’s a question for you all: One of these living things does not need the other two to survive. Which one is it?

Kids always like to ask me, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Last year it was up on the Great Wall of Questions and we got a lot of different opinions about it.

This is a picture of a dinosaur nest from the news today. Can you see where the eggs were? Are those brown pieces from the egg shells?

Looks like there were eggs before there were chickens!

Clicking the picture brings you to the original article.

This is a part of the Kalahari food chain we haven’t talked about yet – the decomposers!

This is about the scorpion, the snake, the hawk, and the Whiskers family. They hunt for bugs and they look for birds. When they see a poisonous millipede that they eat, they scrape off the poison so they could eat it. They also scrape off the poison from the scorpion.

And they look out for top predators. When they see a top predator, they huddle up together so they could protect themselves. When one of the pups is lost and the hawk is going to go get it, the Whiskers run and find it. In another video, the owl was looking at one of the meerkat pups and the meerkat was looking at the owl, and this is strange, but the owl can stay up during the day. The meerkats scare away the snake by making a lion sound and they distract the owl by putting their heads up and down, so they won’t get eaten or get hurt.

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Meerkat Manor mostly is about a family of meerkats called the Whiskers. The other family that is against them is called the Lazuli. The leader of the Whiskers is Flower. A cool fact is that the females are in charge. The husband of the leader is Zaphod.  They eat ants. Sometimes the Meerkats eat birds. They have a home underground and there is an “upstairs” and “downstairs”. They live in the desert in South Africa in the Kalahari desert.

In one part of the movie, the baby got lost because it wandered away. There were too many. When there are too many meerkats, it is hard to keep track of all of the babies. When you watch the video, it might get a little scary or sad. Some meerkats are very vicious. When one meerkat is by itself, it dies, and when they’re all together, they stay alive. When they stay together, they are called packs. They are very cute!

Please look at Meerkat Manor. We hope you look at our website!

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We love visitors! We also like to know where our visitors are from. We’ve had visitors from almost every continent, and from many different countries.

To look at who’s visiting us right now, click the Feedjit link on the right side of this page. You can get an interactive version of this map and a list of visitors and what they’re clicking on!