In school too, problem solving is big with educators. Many people, through the years, have wrestled with math problems such as a train leaves point A traveling at blah blah km per hour and it passes another train traveling at a different speed (also provided). If we know how far apart points A and B are, find out at what point the trains will pass each other. How I hated those problems! But teachers don’t stop there. Now they want you to design a vehicle out of straws (or whatever) that can carry a heavy load of pennies. Never satisfied, teachers later give more complicated problems, like how would you keep a beef broth from going bad.

Many people actually enjoy the challenge of problem solving. It can be great fun to use your wits to come up with a plan that works better than your friend’s device. Hurrah for brains! There is actually no way to avoid problem solving. It is an essential skill. However, have you ever considered how important problem solving is to all living creatures? Every organism is faced with lots of challenges that could prevent them from maturing and leaving offspring for the next generation.

Consider the dandelions which dot my lawn. My objective is to eliminate them. Their objective is to bloom, set seed and produce another generation. There they sit in my lawn. Each rosette of leaves may cover a circle 25 cm or more in diameter. No grass grows under those leaves. So I set forth, determined to pull up each and every rosette. But what is this? Each has a tap root which extends 25 cm or more into the soil. Do I manage to pull up that entire tap root? Hardly ever. Of course the remaining root quickly sends up new leaves and soon there are new rosettes covering the lawn. By now I am too tired of weeding and so the dandelions continue to thrive. Another impressive feature of dandelions is their 100% seed set. They don’t need pollen from another flower to produce seed. This happens even in plants with blossoms which have been pulled up. The flowers turn into seed heads before you know it.

Another feature of dandelions is the way that blossom heads elongate once the seeds are ready. You may not have realized there were so many dandelions in your lawn until you see all those pom pom seed heads stretching way above the grass. In this way the seeds are exposed to the wind which soon distributes those seed into the rest of your garden and into your neighbour’s garden.

The dandelion obviously is a very successful plant when one considers the challenges it faces. Other plants like thistle also display a deep taproot, a wide rosette of leaves and seeds dispersed by the wind. This is just one small example of the amazing  solutions to problems of existence that we see among living creatures. Among plants, we see lots of different solutions for species which live in very dry climates. Often these plants only grow when there is rain. But this means that they have to complete their life cycles really fast while conditions are still moist. Other plants must manage to survive very harsh winters. There are all sorts of interesting ways that they do this. Then there are plants that live in moist tropical climates. Things aren’t perfect there either for the plant. Each one must compete with all sorts of other plants. Thus different problem solving strategies are called for such as growing really fast in locations where light penetrates to the forest floor past the tree canopies above. Other plants like some orchids, simply grow on top of the big plants. They then must collect enough moisture and mineral nutrients from the falling rain.

Animals too face many challenges. Harsh climates are only one of the difficulties that they face. Also they must find food and avoid predators that would like to eat them. Not only do animals need special body plans to enable them to survive, but they also need suitable behaviour patterns as well. Thus we see bats with their amazing wings and echolocation skills for pursuing and catching insects. The body parts would be useless if they did not know how to use them. We see North American beaver that build dams and winter lodges with food stored nearby. We see birds and large four footed animals which migrate amazing distances for rich food and a good breeding place in the summer. These return to home base to survive when conditions at the summer site deteriorate. Monarch butterflies also migrate thousands of kilometers. This is perhaps the most amazing case of migration that we know of. Then there are sea turtles and eels, and other creatures in the ocean that also display amazing talents of migration. These animals all need body plans which allow them to migrate, and the behaviour patterns to know when and how to do so.

The variety of ways in which “problem solving skills” allow animals and plants to survive, is truly astounding. It causes one to stop and think. Did these creatures solve the problems on their own? As we have already discussed, problem solving takes brain power. It seems obvious that the monarch butterfly did not provide itself with an extra fancy navigating system (see Dialogue November 2009 at www.create.ab.ca ) and most unusual behaviour patterns to solve its challenges. Nor did bats or beavers or eels solve theirs by trial and error. These creatures were created with the problem-solving solutions already built into them.

For fun and to exercise your own problem solving skills, why not choose a local animal. Think about how you would solve the problems these creatures face, and then find out if this is how they actually survive. Such an exercise gives us all a lot more respect for the Creator of all creatures great and small!

Ken Ham’s new book Dinosaurs for Kids can be included within the latter category. Unlike Dinosaurs of Eden, also by Ken Ham and others, which is written for young children (ages 4-7 perhaps), this new book provides a much more detailed discussion of the historical context of dinosaur discoveries. This book is aimed at upper elementary age children, perhaps ages 8-12.

The book features inserted half pages which provides extra details of a situation. Also the context of dinosaur history is presented in terms of seven words, each beginning with the letter “f”, for easier memory recall. Thus we move from the theme “formed”, to “fearless, fallen, flood, faded, found and finally fiction.” Some sections merit more attention than others, but various dinosaur examples and “4 fast facts” help to keep the discussion moving along well.

Obviously this book is an ideal addition to a youngster’s collection of dinosaur books. No one title satisfies all interests, but for interesting discussion suitable for the upper elementary audience, this one is a great choice.

Ken Ham. 2009. Dinosaurs for Kids. Hardcover. Full colour. Master Books. 64 pages.

“Sometimes it takes a youngster to come up with an interesting question. The occasion was a lecture on dinosaurs, presented in Edmonton’s Provincial Museum on December 11, 1990. Following the main address by Dr. Phillip Currie of the Royal Tyrrell Museum, an excited group of boy scouts was asking most of the questions. “Is it fun to look for fossils?” “How many dinosaurs has Dr. Currie found?” “What is the biggest fossil found in Alberta?” … Dr. Currie patiently fielded all the queries. Then one young boy asked “Did dinosaurs swim?” As Dr. Currie answered the question, it became evident that this really was an interesting topic.

Dr. Currie remarked that little is actually known about dinosaur habits. There are some tantalizing hints however concerning ankylosaurs or armoured dinosaurs. These remarkable animals were built something like tanks. Their hides were decorated, and weighted down by row upon row of bony knobs and spikes. In Alberta, the vast majority of articulated ankylosaur skeletons are found upside down. They lie on their backs with feet projecting upward. Most experts, Dr. Currie included, suspect that these animals foolishly ventured into water over their heads. Unfortunately, as their bodies were top heavy, these animals tipped over, sank and drowned.

One wonders if the ankylosaurs voluntarily entered deep water, or if a flash flood overtook the victims. Evidences of similar sad events are widely dispersed. American palaeontologist Dr. Robert Bakker, in his 1986 book The Dinosaur Heresies (William Morrow and Company, Inc. New York), discussed several occurrences of armour-plated nodosaurs (ankylosaur relatives) found upside down in marine sediments. He asks the rhetorical question whether these dinosaurs foolishly went swimming or whether their carcasses were merely washed out to sea. He concludes: “The problem of oceangoing nodosaurs is especially perplexing because the Como carcass, upside down at the bottom of the Benton Sea, is not an isolated instance. Nodosaur carcasses lying on their backs cropped up in marine beds in Kansas in 1909 and several times since in similar sedimentary circumstances.” (p. 40)”

As in the Dialogue excerpt above, so it was that the discovery of an ankylosaur skeleton, north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, on Monday March 21, 2011, should not have come as a total surprise. Here was another terrestrial (land loving) dinosaur found, presumably upside down, in marine sediments. But the site was 150 km from the nearest land based artifacts. This creature did not just step into water over his head! There were some other remarkable features to this case too. This specimen was found in sediments quite a lot lower down in the rock layers than most ankylosaurs. Also this big and no doubt heavy specimen (5 m long and a very solid 2 m wide) was beautifully preserved in its original three dimensional shape.

In general, ankylosaur fossils are rare. Yet here was an almost complete specimen, not squashed as most dinosaurs are, but shaped as in life, displaying its short but powerful legs, its wide body protected by heavy armour, and its tail supplied with a heavy club at the tip.

The creatures found in the sediments of the Alberta oilsands, north of Fort McMurray, typically include clams, and beautiful ammonites (like squid but with shells), and large swimming reptiles like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. But now here we have a rare skeleton of a terrestrial dinosaur. Moreover these dinosaurs, though rare, are known for being found in sediments which include marine creatures. What kind of flooding, one wonders, would sweep these creatures off their feet and wash them far out to sea? How fast were those water currents moving to carry these heavy creatures along and then dump them in a permanently entombing slurry of sediments? On the topic Robert Bakker himself remarked: “Most fossil bones owe their preservation to quick burial by sediment right after the death of their owner …. Big bones, such as those of dinosaurs, required big floods of mud to cover them…” (p. 44 and 45)

So the events of March 2011 near Fort McMurray give us lots to think about. Consider the rushing waters carrying dinosaurs and sediment. Think about what kind of flood (perhaps like a tsunami?) that event must have involved. How far did that flooding extend? Most of the other ankylosaurs in the province of Alberta are found much farther south near Drumheller and beyond. Yet most of them were also overcome by deep water. And just to put things in some sort of context – a similar nodosaurid ankylosaur has been found in similar marine sediments on James Ross Island, in Antartica!! I, for one, am certainly happy there are no similar disasters in the world today.