Okay, there are thunderstorms rolling in rather early today so no outside pictures for me. As I've said before, Tampa is second in the world for most lightning strikes. Seriously, at pre-school I learned not to talk to strangers, what to do in case of fire, and how not to get struck by lightning. It's just a thing around here. The weather lady said yesterday we had a chance between 1pm and 6pm but these are a little early. I guess it's better to get them out of the way since there is a Very Important Hockey Game going on here tonight and we don't want people getting hurt on the way into the game. But since our team is the Lightning, most locals see this kind of weather as good luck.
Anyway, some of you may know that there's a Very Big Movie coming out on Friday called "Jurassic World". FYI, NBC will be showing the original "Jurassic Park" on Friday night. I watched it on AMC last weekend. And that got me talking with Mom about whether or not there would have been butterflies hanging with the dinosaurs. Now, the Jurassic period was 201 to 145 million years ago. But many critics of the movie point out that several of the dinosaurs are from the Cretaceous Period which was 145 to 66 million years ago. Then, that whole extinction thing happened. Part of that extinction event was that a lot of plants died off (lack of photosynthesis due to particles in the air) which killed the herbivores which in turn, killed the carnivores. Remember that whole thing about nature being connected?
Well, the oldest moth fossil is dated 190 million years ago (Lower Jurassic Period) and was found in Dorset, UK. Apparently, early moths were similar to caddisflies. Butterflies came much, much later with fossils showing up about 40-50 million years ago. I have seen other sources say butterflies showed up about 60 million years ago. But you can see the butterflies came much later. It is thought that the Skippers were the first to break off the evolutionary chain to become butterflies. Looking at them, you can see why.
So when I'm watching those dinosaurs, I fully expect to see some moths, but no butterflies. Although, from the trailers these idiots were dumb enough to genetically breed a new dinosaur so I'm sure the park has lots of inaccuracies. How would they keep the butterflies off the island anyway? It's supposed to be off the coast of Costa Rica so I imagine there would be lots of butterflies. Can you imagine if they drank the tears of dinosaurs like some butterflies drink from cows and stuff these days? That would be awesome! But frankly, I'm just going because I want to watch some dinosaurs eat people. You know that's why we go see these films.
Plus, I want to know how Chris Pratt's character manages to train a bunch of Velociraptors. I can't even get a caterpillar to obey and he can train dinosaurs? Sure...I'll just suspend my belief for that one.
This has been your daily lesson in butterflies from Melanie! I'm going back to drinking my latte and waiting for a male Orange-Barred Sulphur to emerge.
