The Mississippi Burning

The Mississippi Burning What - A trial where some members of the Ku Klux Klan in Missisippi were charged for the killings of three civil rights activists(James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman).When - The trial took place in October 1967, but some men were prosecuted later as well. For example one of the ringleaders: Edgar Ray Killen, who was found guilty on three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, and was sentenced to a maximum of 60 years in prison. The activists were killed in 1967.Where - The trial took place in Mississippi court house. The killings took place while the civil rights activists were driving "home" at Highway 16.Who -Here is a list of the key persons in the trial and investigation.The victims: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman Michael SchwernerKey defendants: Cecil Price, Lawrence Rainey, Wayne Roberts, Edgar Ray Killen, Sam BowersProsecutor: John DoarFed investigator: Joseph SullivanFed agent: John ProctorProsecution witnesses: James Jordan Delmar Dennis.The Ku Klux Klan on parade down Pennsylvania Avenu...The judge: William CoxWhy (killings) - The most considerable reason why the three men were killed, was hatred. KKK hated the blacks and wanted white supremacy in the USA. They think black and white people should not be considered as equal. The civil rights activists were going to help black people to vote, and KKK did not accept that, which result in killing.Why (trial) - The Killings of three the Civil Rights workers. Sam Bowers was an "Imperial Wizard" of the KKK, who announced the assassination. The First attempt to kill Schwerner was unsuccessful, but resulted in burning Mont Zion Church.Later, Deputy sheriff Price, who was a member of the KKK, saw the three men, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney in a wagon on Highway...

Evolution of Dinosaurs to Modern Animals

Evolution of Dinosaurs to Modern Animals Dinosaurs didnt spring suddenly into existence two hundred million years ago, huge, toothy, and hungry for grub. Like all living things, they evolved, slowly and gradually, according to the rules of Darwinian selection and adaptation, from previously existing creatures- in this case, a family of primitive reptiles known as archosaurs (ruling lizards). On the face of it, archosaurs werent all that different from the dinosaurs that succeeded them. However, these Triassic reptiles were much smaller than later dinosaurs, and they possessed certain characteristic features that set them apart from their more famous descendants (most notably, the lack of a locked-in posture for their front and hind limbs). Paleontologists may even have identified the single genus of archosaur from which all dinosaurs evolved: Lagosuchus (Greek for rabbit crocodile), a quick, tiny reptile that scurried across the forests of early Triassic South America, and that sometimes goes by the name Marasuchus. Evolution During the Triassic Period Confusing matters somewhat, the archosaurs of the middle to late Triassic period didnt only give rise to dinosaurs. Isolated populations of these ruling reptiles also spawned the very first pterosaurs and crocodiles. For as much as 20 million years, in fact, the part of the Pangean supercontinent corresponding to modern-day South America was thick with two-legged archosaurs, two-legged dinosaurs, and even two-legged crocodiles- and even  experienced paleontologists sometimes have trouble distinguishing between the fossil specimens of these three families! Experts are unsure whether the archosaurs from which the dinosaurs descended coexisted with the therapsids (mammal-like reptiles) of the late Permian period, or whether they appeared on the scene after the Permian/Triassic Extinction Event 250 million years ago, a geologic upheaval that killed about three-quarters of all land-dwelling animals on earth. From the perspective of dinosaur evolution, though, this may be a distinction without a difference. Whats clear is that dinosaurs gained the upper hand by the start of the Jurassic period.  (By the way, you may be surprised to learn that therapsids spawned the first mammals around the same time, the late Triassic period, as archosaurs spawned the first dinosaurs.) The First Dinosaurs Once you climb your way out of late Triassic South America, the path of dinosaur evolution comes into much sharper focus, as the very first dinosaurs slowly radiated into the sauropods, tyrannosaurs, and raptors we all know and love today. The best current candidate for the first true dinosaur is the South American Eoraptor, a nimble, two-legged meat-eater akin to the slightly later Coelophysis of North America. Eoraptor and its ilk survived by eating the smaller crocodiles, archosaurs, and proto-mammals of its lush forest environment, and may have hunted by night. The next important event in dinosaur evolution, after the appearance of Eoraptor, was the split between saurischian (lizard-hipped) and ornithischian (bird-hipped) dinosaurs, which transpired just before the start of the Jurassic period. The first ornithischian dinosaur (a good candidate is Pisanosaurus) was the direct descendant of the vast bulk of the plant-eating dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era, including ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, and ornithopods. Saurischians, meanwhile, split into two main families: theropods (the meat-eating dinosaurs, including tyrannosaurs and raptors) and prosauropods (the slender, bipedal, plant-eating dinosaurs that later evolved into gigantic sauropods and titanosaurs). A good candidate for the first prosauropod, or sauropodomorph, is Panphagia, the name of which is Greek for eats everything. Ongoing Dinosaur Evolution Once these major dinosaur families were established, around the start of the Jurassic period, evolution continued to take its natural course. But according to recent research, the pace of dinosaur adaptation  slowed down drastically during the later Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs were more rigidly locked into existing families and their rates of speciation and diversification slowed. The corresponding lack of diversity may have made dinosaurs ripe pickings for the K/T Extinction Event  when a meteor impact decimated planetary food supplies. Ironically, just the way the Permian/Triassic Extinction Event paved the way for the rise of dinosaurs, the K/T Extinction cleared the way for the rise of mammals- which had existed alongside the dinosaurs all along, in small, quivering, mouse-like packages.