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Extinct Animals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3D Animation Movies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Hijabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Cardboard Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Space Flights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Teens that Changed the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0 Amusement Parks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Fantasy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

FEATURE ARTICLE

t c n i t Ex als m i n a

There was a time when the Earth was populated by animals and plants which were much different from those we are used to seeing nowadays. We call it extinction: groups of animals and plants that are not alive anymore. Animals and plants can become extinct naturally or by more unusual causes, like the theory that says a meteor caused the extinction of the dinosaurs when it hit the Earth 66 million years ago. Some dinosaurs were the largest known land animals – you can become extinct even if you are very big.

Causes of extinction More than 99 percent of all living things that have ever lived on the Earth are now extinct.

Natural extinction happens when the things a plant or animal needs to stay alive run out – food, water, a place to live – or when some other living thing uses them instead.

On average, a species (a group or type of living thing) becomes extinct after about 10 million years. Some living things last much longer, maybe hundreds of millions of years, for example deep-sea sharks like the frilled shark.

Extinction Events The meteor which caused the extinction of dinosaurs is an unusual, although natural, event. There have been at least five such very mass extinctions on Earth. The largest was perhaps caused by a very large volcano erupting or a meteor exploding, more than 250 million years ago.

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“Dead as a dodo.”

The dodo was a large bird without wings, wh ich lived on the island Mauritius in the Indian of Ocean, 2,000 kilometre s from the African coast More than three feet tal . l, and weighing as mu ch as twenty kilograms became extinct only 65 , it years after the first Eu ropean explorers arrive because it was hunted d and ea which the Europeans bro ten by sailors, their dogs, and other animals ught. The explorers als o destroyed the forest close to the sea where s the dodo lived.

Modern events

This drawing is from the children's book Alice's Adventures in Wo nderland, written 200 years later.

Extinction can also be caused by things we humans do, especially farming, logging, mining, fishing and because of cities growing larger. All these activities can destroy the habitats of other living things, both plants and animals. Some scientists think we are now at the beginning of a mass extinction event caused by humans.

Extinct Animals of Brazil As well as the dinosaurs, crocodiles, iguanas, sea-shells, snails and beetles which are now extinct, there were also very large flightless birds which lived in Brazil. Unlike the dodo of Mauritius, however, they were predators, hunting and eating other animals. Called Phorusrhacids, scientists also know them as “terror birds” - probably good for us that they are also now extinct! We only know them from the fossil bones we have found.

Another extinct animal which lived in South America around the same time was the Doedicurus. The size of a car, it looked like a giant armadillo – the much smaller modern armadillo has survived – and was a plant-eater.

It was probably prey for the “terror birds,” and was perhaps hunted to extinction by the first humans to live in South America, about 11,000 years ago.

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