Colorado's rainforest. (Clippings).When most people think of Colorado, they think of a dry mountainscape covered by snow in the winter and heat in the summer. But two researchers have found that 64 million years ago, the area may have actually been a tropical rainforest Tropical rainforests are rainforests generally found near the equator. They are common in Asia, Africa, South America, Central America, and on many of the Pacific Islands. . In an article in the June 28th issue of Science, Kirk Johnson This article is about the professional boxer. For the shock image, see goatse. Kirk Johnson (born June 29, 1972) is a professional heavyweight boxer from North Preston, Nova Scotia, Canada. and Beth Ellis of the Denver Museum of Nature and Sciences The Denver Museum Of Nature and Science (DMNS) is the main natural history museum in Denver, Colorado. Home to a number of exhibits, the museum focuses on research and education of the Denver Metro Area. reported finding fossilized fos·sil·ize v. fos·sil·ized, fos·sil·iz·ing, fos·sil·iz·es v.tr. 1. To convert into a fossil. 2. To make outmoded or inflexible with time; antiquate. v.intr. evidence of a lush rainforest in Castle Rock, just 25 miles south of Denver. Ellis said the key to identifying the forest was the large size of the leaves and the presence of drip tips--rapidly tapering tips that are common in rainforests. The findings were surprising because of the picture they paint about the recovery of life after a mass extinction mass extinction, the extinction of a large percentage of the earth's species, opening ecological niches for other species to fill. There have been at least ten such events. that included the dinosaurs. Ellis said most researchers believed life would take 10 million years to reemerge strongly, but the rainforest was present just 1.4 million years after the dinosaur's demise. It is not entirely clear how the rainforest developed, but Ellis said its growth may have been promoted by moist air coming off the much-larger Gulf of Mexico Noun 1. Gulf of Mexico - an arm of the Atlantic to the south of the United States and to the east of Mexico Golfo de Mexico Atlantic, Atlantic Ocean - the 2nd largest ocean; separates North and South America on the west from Europe and Africa on the east and the inland Cannonball Sea, which extended to the Dakotas. Notably, the rainforest in Colorado contained incredible diversity. Ellis said that multitudes of plant species were found at every turn. "You can get 30 to 50 different species in a given hole of 300 leaves," she said. "Then you'll find another 30 to 50 species in the next hole." |
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