Isabella Dibbini
AP Biology
Current Event #5
19 October 2017
Fleur, Nicholas St. “How Dinosaurs Swapped Terrifying Teeth for Bird Beaks.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/science/dinosaurs-beaks-teeth-birds.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FEvolution&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=collection.
The article “How Dinosaurs Swapped Terrifying Teeth for Bird Beaks,” by Nicholas St. Fleur discusses how over millions of years, dinosaurs have evolved into birds. Dinosaurs were known for having sharp, serrated teeth that they used to catch their prey. However, over time these sharp teeth were replaced with beaks. The transformation of the theropod mouth is currently unknown, but recently, a study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that provides insight into a potential evolutionary mechanism behind the transition. Amy Balanoff, the biologist who worked on this study, described her findings as “evidence showing the line of evolution from a Tyrannosaurus rex to a pigeon.” Dr. Balanoff, and her team, led by Shuo Wang, used fossils to analyze modern animals. The results they obtained supports the idea that the loss of teeth and the emergence of beaks are connected processes in theropods. The team suggested, “As the beak grew across the dinosaur’s face, it also inhibited the growth of teeth.” Fleur the author, believes that this process continued until theropods developed mouths that resembled the bird beaks seen today. In a different study, Dr. Wang, the leader of the team, discovered an umu-like theropod that developed teeth at a young age but lost them as it got older and morphed into an adult with a beak. Dr. Wang and his team continued to conduct their research and came upon two other theropods that seemed to have undergone transitions similar to the first one. To support this claim, Fleur addresses the fact that all three of the theropods “... had beaks but with vestigial, or functionless, tooth sockets.” These three theropods provided evidence for three distinctly different lineages that lost their teeth during postnatal development and formed beaks. Once this fossil evidence was collected, Dr. Wang’s team furthered their research by performing a comparative and statistical analysis of thousands of modern vertebrates, that allowed them to understand the shared characteristics of animals that develop beaks.
Each day, thousands of people either study, teach or learn about evolution. It is a topic that has puzzled many scientists for decades and is the foundation of biology. Determining why dinosaurs with serrated teeth have evolved into birds with beaks is crucial to our society and to our scientific history. Understanding the evolution of this species will also help us predict what changes could come in the future. This subject is also relevant to our world and current issues that concern all of us. Evolution is occurring in every living species on this planet. No topic in biology can be truly understood without first understanding the basis of evolution.
Throughout this article, the author makes statements and supports them with concrete evidence. In addition, the structure of this article is well planned out. She begins by introducing her main argument and then goes into depth about the experiments conducted by Dr. Wang’s team, to further this idea. It was interesting to see the connections Fleur made between the experiments Dr. Wang had conducted in the past, and his current studies. While this article was well written, there are a few things that the author could have done to make her story more compelling. One suggestion that can be made to improve this article would be to incorporate additional plans on how scientists would further this study. Overall, this article was interesting and very well written.
Robby Schetlick
ReplyDeleteAP Biology
Current Events Comment
September 13 2017
Citation: Fleur, Nicholas St. “How Dinosaurs Swapped Terrifying Teeth for Bird Beaks.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Sept. 2017,
Isabella Dibbini reviewed the New York Times article “How Dinosaurs Swapped Terrifying Teeth for Bird Beaks.” The report is generally well written and has primarily good aspects. The best skill that Dibbini displays in her review is the ability to interweave evidence from the article in her writing. She does not use evidence for the sake of putting evidence in her article, and instead it flows nicely through her points without interrupting her train of thought. For example, she wrote: “To support this claim, Fleur addresses the fact that all three of the theropods ‘... had beaks but with vestigial, or functionless, tooth sockets.’ ” Instead of setting up for the quote, it just works into her writing, making the review seem much more composed and authoritative. The second aspect done well is her organization. She follows the 3 paragraph standard, making it easy for any frequent followers of the blog to read it quickly. Even for newcomers to the blog, her topic and concluding sentences act as a strong guide for her paragraphs and help set up her overall theme. For instance, she says in her third paragraph: “Throughout this article, the author makes statements and supports them with concrete evidence.” Not surprisingly, this paragraph describes what the NY times author did well. Isabella’s third aspect done well is the way she helped the reader understand vocabulary. Instead of defining outright what something was, she added a personal description such as, “umu-like theropod” that helps readers picture what they are seeing instead of trying to make their own image.
Isabella has a few aspects that she can still work on to improve her article. The most glaring issue was her second paragraph. It felt out of place compared to the rest of her writing, and entirely overblown. Look no further than when she writes, “Determining why dinosaurs with serrated teeth have evolved into birds with beaks is crucial to our society and to our scientific history.” Evolution is obviously a very important topic to biology, but realistically this discovery won't be affecting anyone’s real life anytime soon. These drastic and cheesy statements take away from the credibility of the review that was so strongly set up in paragraph 1. She can fix this problem by grounding herself in a stricter sense realism that makes her arguments seem more believable to the average reader.. The next issue Isabella can fix is her minimalist approach to the third paragraph. She claims the article to be a very complicated and detailed article, but then also doesn’t pick it apart very much in her opportunity to do so in her third paragraph. Saying “One suggestion that can be made to improve this article would be to incorporate additional plans on how scientists would further this study,” is just too vague and makes no sense without the specific context of the article. This just makes the article feel like a lazy wrap up to an assignment. I would suggest going deeper into the article and making the improvements very specific to exact paragraphs or lines within the article to help bring the reader closer to the source material.
This review serves as a reminder for me that it is always important to go back to what we consider “old science” to try to take it in a new direction. In this case, evolution is an old topic of science, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant or important. Evolution is always continuing, and we can’t ever take what we know for granted, either. It is important to check our work as scientists, and we might even be able to take it in a new direction to discover something, like the scientists who wrote the article.
Fleur, Nicholas St. “How Dinosaurs Swapped Terrifying Teeth for Bird Beaks.” The New York
ReplyDeleteTimes, The New York Times, 26 Sept. 2017,
www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/science/dinosaurs-beaks-teeth-birds.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FEvolution&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=collection.
I read Isabella’s review of “How Dinosaurs Swapped Terrifying Teeth for Bird Beaks” from the New York Times. One thing that was well done was her explanation of how this new discovery about dinosaurs could potentially have a large impact on humans. In it, she spoke about how the concept behind it dealt with evolution, something that we have all learned. By applying it and seeing the way it has impacted dinosaurs, Isabella relates it to the human’s own evolution and what may happen in the future. She also talked about how almost everything relates to evolution in some way, and therefore is an important topic to understand thoroughly. Another part that was well done was her critique of the overall article. She included both pros and cons about what the writer did. She explained how the article was thorough in most of its explanations about the research that the scientist did, comparing the research with some of his previous experiments. She also explained how the article could have improved with including details as to how they can further his research, considering how important it is in our understanding of evolution. Lastly, I thought her summary was well written. Isabella explained the past of what we had known about dinosaurs and then transitions into the new findings and how the experiments was done through the usage of fossils.
One thing that could have improved from her critique was her use of quotes. I thought that the New York Times article included a lot of intriguing quotes that Isabella should have included to enhance her own critique. She simply used two quotes that I felt was quite bland, and were things that could easily have been paraphrased. Another thing that could have improved for her summary was an explanation of the protein called bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4) which turns out to be one of the major roots of how the evolutions occurred (there are other factors too), which Isabella did not include. I felt like such an important detail should not have been left out.
Overall, I liked this article and her review because it brings to light the way that science has evolved over the years. Despite how long scientists have studied the dinosaurs and evolution, there will always be more discoveries that can enhance our previous knowledge. It was interesting connecting the dinosaur’s evolution to birds with how humans themselves will evolve one day and leaves a lot to wonder.
Susie Goodell
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Biology
10/30/17
Fleur, Nicholas St. “How Dinosaurs Swapped Terrifying Teeth for Bird Beaks.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/science/dinosaurs-beaks-teeth-birds.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FEvolution&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=collection.
Current Event 6
For this current event, I chose to read my classmate’s, Isabella, review of the article “How Dinosaurs Swapped Terrifying Teeth for Bird Beaks” by Nicholas St. Fleur of The New York Times. This article discusses the evolution of dinosaurs into birds over millions of years as their sharp teeth changed into beaks. The author describes the studies in which scientists tried to find out how this evolution occurred. Bella summarized the importance of this topic to our world very well by connecting it to our own understanding of evolution and how it will affect us in the future. Bella did a great job with her summary of the article. She included background information on the change itself and also added details about the scientists and their work to discover why the change occurred. Bella also had a great analysis of the strong points of the article as she provided specific details about what the author did well.
There are a few aspects that Bella could fix to improve her review. While she had a great analysis of the good aspects of the article, Bella could have gone a little more in depth with the parts that need improvement. She mentioned that she had multiple suggestions, but only gave one. It might have been nice to hear the others. Also, she could have included another quote, maybe from one of the scientists working on the study. This would help strengthen her claims and support her summary of the article and the studies. However, overall, Bella did a great job with this review.
This review stood out to me on the blog because I had never thought about if dinosaurs had evolved into animals we see today. It intrigues me to think about this evolution and what we can learn from it. As Bella mentioned, evolution is always happening and maybe studying this particular change can help us predict what will happen to our species or others in the future. It was really interesting to read about and I will look for more updates on this topic.
Ava Austi
ReplyDeleteAP Biology
Current Event #6
10/29/17
Fleur, Nicholas St. “How Dinosaurs Swapped Terrifying Teeth for Bird Beaks.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/science/dinosaurs-beaks-teeth-birds.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FEvolution&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=collection.
Isabella wrote a great review based off the article “How Dinosaurs Swapped Terrifying Teeth for Bird Beaks” by Nicholas St. Fleur from The New York Times. This article discusses how over millions of years, dinosaurs have evolved into birds. Throughout the review of the article, there were many aspects that Isabella did well in order to write a great review. Firstly, Isabella did an excellent job of providing a detailed summary for the reader. She included background information on the change itself and also added details about the scientists and their hard work to discover why the change occurred. This allowed me as the audience to fully understand what Isabella’s article was about without any confusion. Isabella also did a great job of introducing and incorporating quotes from Amy Balanoff and her team; this allowed me as a reader to have an idea of what Amy and her team’s thoughts were. Lastly, I enjoyed how Isabella helped the audience understand the article very well. She helped the reader understand vocabulary; instead of giving the pure definition only, she included personal descriptions which helped me as a reader get a better understanding. Isabella successfully wrote a clear and interesting review of the article she read.
Although Isabella presented a great review of the article, there were some aspects where she could have improved. While she had a great analysis of the good aspects of the article, she would have benefited if she gone more in depth with the parts that needed improvement. She mentioned that she had multiple suggestions but she only gave one. Also, I think Isabella could have transitioned better from paragraph to paragraph. Doing this would make the review more pleasing for the audience to read. These issues are both easy to fix in order to make Isabella’s review even better. Even though there were some parts of the review that Isabella could have improved, I think she wrote a great review of the article.
I thought Isabella did a great job in writing her review and I really enjoyed reading it. I didn’t choose this article for a specific reason but I am happy I did. It intrigues me to think about what we can learn from this evolution; if it can possibly shine light to humans of what will happen to our species over time. After reading Isabella’s review, I want to learn more about the evolution of dinosaurs. Overall, I think Isabella successfully wrote a clear and detailed review of her article.