Thursday November 5, 2009, 10:03 am
Some infomation in this article is not valid, Im soory to say. One statement in there is totally FALSE...

"However, the wolf still poses a conundrum as the islands have never been connected to the South American mainland and on other land mammals have managed to live there."

At one point in time our planet was ONE continent, Pangea. It later slpit to make the 7 coninents we know today.

I think they will be full of more suprises as they finally begin to look at animal life and the evolution of it. For example, There are Old World Moneys that orininated in Africa, and New wold Monkeys that originated in South America. Scienists claim that the monkeys must have floated over to South America on a piece of vegitation....LOL... maybe...

There there is the question of the Leopard in Asia and Africa and the Jaguar in South America... a very similar Big Cat except for the spots...

Undoubably there were land masses closer together, because neither big cats or monkeys would be traveling on "ice bridges" especially when they had climates that suited them just fine... no reason to migrate

Thursday November 5, 2009, 6:51 pm
Well Miss Nyack, not to intentionally contradict you, but on behalf of the article, the Falklands aren't isolated volcanic islands as one might presuppose, but indeed as you point out were once connected, not during Pangea though, but 400 million years ago as Gondwana, with the islands as actually a part of southeastern Africa. Fragments of SE Africa began rifting & fragmenting apart and by 200 million years ago those fragments are what we call the Falklands.

Since the rifting the Falklands have not been connected with any land mass and have been isolated for well over 200 million years. Most definitely much longer than before the first wolf made his appearance.

So, it has been a mystery on how the canid arrived on the islands and as the article pointed out, the only mammal (not even a mouse) to do so.

As there was heavy glaciation experienced in that Pacific Ocean's land masses, perhaps an ice bridge connecting the islands to S. America, seems a good probable route during one of the ice ages...

Friday November 6, 2009, 9:45 am
It is fascinating to study the past - how old is that rock? where did that fossil come from?

I saw a chart that showed all the datings - from Uranium-238, half-life 4.46 billion years - to dendrochronology. Tree ring age dating, of course, can only go back about five thousand years - that's pretty old for a tree!

The chart showed the time limit for each type dating, including the recent limit (trying to date an object that is about three hundred years old would be hard using U-238.)

Here is something fascinating about animal migration: mammals have only been living in New Zealand for about fifteen thousand years.

Friday November 6, 2009, 2:27 pm
Thanks Ingrid

Tuesday November 17, 2009, 8:50 pm
this is facinating :) I love wolves even though I don't even know where the falklands are I really enjoyed this article