8102 - Today I learned -

[scottobear]

Dinosaurs are a specific subgroup of the archosaurs, a group that also includes crocodiles, pterosaurs, and birds. although pterosaurs are close relations, they are not true dinosaurs. Even more distantly related to dinosaurs are the marine reptiles, which include the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. Mammoths and mastodons are mammals and did not appear until many millions of years after the close of the Cretaceous period. Dimetrodon is neither a reptile nor a mammal, but a basal synapsid, i.e., an early relative of the ancestors of mammals.

I honestly didn't know that pterosaurs and marine reptiles didn't count as dinos,  or that dinosaur wasn't a catch-all term before today, and I've loved early critters for well over three decades. Talk about a hole in my education!

-as a side result of this entry of graypumpkin 's

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Also testing out this site to seek out info re: sexual predators over a mapped area -

http://www.familywatchdog.us/

Type in your home address or a family members address. The web site will bring up a map of your neighborhood with small colored boxes on it. The small House icon represents your address; the colored boxes represent sex offenders in your area.

Click on the colored boxes and it will bring up the offender's photograph and the exact address, names and employers. Click ALL AROUND, you will be amazed at the information you get!

Seems to work better with MSIE than Mozilla

Comments

[eryx-uk.livejournal.com]

Marine reptiles and pterosaurs don't count as dinosaurs because (as I found out a couple years ago) all land based dinosaurs had a piece of bone in their skulls that the marine and flying reptiles don't.

[eryx-uk.livejournal.com]

I'm quite shocked. That watchdog site is US only so as a test I grabbed a WW sourcebook and input the address of White Wolf publishing, and the sheer number of red squares (hell, the sheer number of squares!) was incredible.

I don't think we have a site like that for the UK.

damn

[phillykat.livejournal.com]

this is the msg i got:

Unfortunately, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Vermont do not currently provide addresses for registered sex offenders. Consequently, we are unable to provide adequate or meaningful information about sex offenders located in these states.

[ex-brokensou724.livejournal.com]

Well I cant get the site to work....

But I have taken a look at this one.... http://www.meganslaw.ca.gov/homepage.htm

There is a guy right in my complex.... scary

[aldric-stien.livejournal.com]

I remember most of that dino stuff. I was way to into all of that as a little kid( like pre-k) All of my first books where about ancient animals.
I've moved up in the ancient history world now though, I'm at Anthropology, the study of people in history. I'ts kind of close though.

[juliabee.livejournal.com]

I couldn't get to the watchdog site yesterday, but had been to it months ago, and was apalled. :P

I just checked it again, and it says there are 625 offenders around me. Our local site, says there are 150 or something like that within a 2 mile radius of me.

I think it's out of control...and I often wonder why more isn't done about it. Why it's only recently that it's becoming more talked about?