Have you ever heard of the Mesozoic Era? It
is the time in history, about 250 million years ago, when dinosaurs lived
on Earth. Many of them were herbivores. That means they ate plants.
Some dinosaurs built their nests in plants.
Can you think of other ways the dinosaurs may have used plants?
Dinosaurs died out about 65 million years
ago, but many of the plants from that era still grow today. Some of the
plants include cycads, ferns, the ginkgo biloba tree and the dawn redwood.
Cycads look like little palm trees and
produce cones. Ferns come in many forms and sizes and produce spores.
These spores are located on the underside of the leaves and look like
brown dots or stripes. The ginkgo tree, which comes from Asia, has
fan-shaped leaves. The dawn redwood existed 90 million to 15 million years
ago and is possibly the tallest tree in North America.
You can see these prehistoric plants and
about 5,000 others at the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden at UCLA in
Westwood.For more information, call (310) 825-1260 or visit http://
www.botgard.ucla.edu.
*
This learning link was provided by Carol Felixson from the Mildred E.
Mathias Botanical Garden at UCLA.
