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Poems and Thoughts by Frank Maurer

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Dinosaur

Dinosaur Bone opus 68

I collected a piece of a dinosaur bone while in Wyoming.
I am quite sure it was part of a large creature's leg.
One could see the small pocking of tiny cells.
There were no rings, so surely not petrified wood.
Small riverlets of blue wended their way across the surface--
Certainly indicating the remnant from a once living animal.

How haunting and mind-blowing to be holding such a rock;
A part of a former being, dating back many scores of centuries.
Just holding it, put my own existence into exact perspective;
Truly, I have existed for only a speck of time
During our wondrous earth's geologic history.

Little Dinosaurs at my Window opus 103

Little dinosaurs fly onto my birdfeeder,
Reminding me of our Earth's past.
How the wonders of Evolution
Have rendered those present.
Giant reptilian creatures,
Now small (for the most part).
Feathered, hollow boned--pneumatic--
Enchanting and delicate creatures
Of our now world.

Grasping onto a Future Past opus 122

Ornithologists are a very dedicated group--
Studying the relationships of our remnant dinosaurs.
With pending, ominous climate change,
Birds are our climate barometers--
Manifesting sensitive changes of their ranges,
As humans continue to spew waste into the atmosphere.

Many recordings are carefully being created
To preserve the present sounds of the many various habitats--
For future analysis when all is changed or lost.

Lovers of their ornithological creatures

Are, for all of us, truly grasping onto a future past.

Eleven Primaries Allow Flight opus 303

For many decades I have taught children (and some adults)
That the first flight feathers (primaries) on the wing of a bird
Number eleven in most birds, with another eleven or so,
Comprising the secondaries on the rear of the wing.
Could there be a tertiary? Yes, rarely, but they exist.
The Mandarin Duck of Asia has such a feather
Poking up towards the rear of the wing!
Our Wood Duck, the only member of the genus, Aix,
And 'cousin' to the Mandarin, is devoid of this extra ornament.

Studies of dinosaurs and the phenomenon of flight
Has been studied by paleontologists,
And nine to eleven feathers appear crucial for flight,
Enabling those later dinosaurs which evolved to birds.
The full story is more complex, but there is no doubt
That some dinosaurs really were able to fly.
So, as you observe a bird flying past you,
Take a moment to pause and realize the special sight before you,
Which binds our present time with the wondrous history
Of the ever-evolving life on our Blue Planet.

There was Chicxulub and now Nadir? opus 446

Why can't freakin' science just leave things be!?
We are aware of the 'Chicxulub' meteor, 66 million years ago,
Leaving a 124 mile-wide crater under the Gulf of Mexico's
Yucatan Peninsula, and basically wiping out the dinosaurs.
(But, of course, birds are still around!)
As has been assumed, this asteroid acted alone.
But wait--another 5 mile-wide crater, formed at around the same time,
Has been found off the coast of West Africa and named the Nadir Crater.
The rim of the crater itself is about 9,200 meters wide,
With 22,000 meters of concentric circles called the brim.
The approaching 450-500 meter-wide asteroid became a fireball,
Hitting the Earth at about 72,000 km per hour.
Along with this was a 70 magnitude earthquake.
Of course, it is unusual to have two large impacts so close in time,
Both occurring at the end of the Cretaceous period,
The period when the dinosaurs became extinct.

Today Bennu, about the same size as the Nadir asteroid,
Is currently the most hazardous object orbiting near Earth.
With a probability of 1 in 2,700, Bennu could hit Earth about September 2182.
By that time the art of nudging asteroids out of orbit may be totally
perfected!?!

The Longevity Bottleneck Hypothesis opus 447

For a long time now, humans have sought a longer life span.
Some slow progress has been accomplished.
There may be, however, something in our deeper past
That has caused our lack of accumulated years.
The name for this has been dubbed the 'Longevity Bottleneck Hypothesis'.
Because dinosaurs found the newly evolved mammals to be quite tasty,
The predation on these small, fuzzy creatures gradually increased.
For more than 100 million years dinosaurs were the dominant predator,
While mammals were usually small, nocturnal, and short-lived.
Thus dinosaurs 'forced' mammals through predation to lose or inactivate
Genes and pathways associated with long life.
In other words, rapid reproduction was more adaptive for survival!
Remember, this is an hypothesis,
(A scientific theory has to be proven from many valid hypotheses),
So it is not accepted by all, but just like the efforts to reactivate the dinosaur tail
In a chicken, reactivation of our 'longevity genes' might result in a similar consequence:
Are we really accomplishing beneficial outcomes--creating little 'chicken dinosaurs',
Or perhaps worse, thousands of really old people who may lack productivity?

Is Selection Our Mindless Life Guide? opus 594

From my boyhood, and I was a very inquisitive child,
I started learning about mammals,
By first studying all aspects of my childhood domestic rabbits,
And along with that, an intense study of our avian neighbors.
Audubon Camps and bird counts kept me up to snuff.
Of course also dinosaurs--but to a lesser extent than others my age,
Although, later in life, teaching in Africa,
I ferreted out the remnant tracks of the former dinosaur inhabitants,
Making many plaster casts of their plodding on earth in good future sandstone.
Now, even later in life, I am fascinated and overwhelmed
With the 25,000 species of trilobite,
Which densely populated the earth-seas for about 270 million years.
Their morphology and progressive evolution towards greater elaboration,
Was perhaps part of their end; Their ever-more elaborate morphology
For sexual competition getting the best of them.
Remember the Irish Elk with their competing secondary-sexual-character antlers,
With which the males could no longer bear in competition.
This might demonstrate that 'mindless' selection to a 'double' end-adaptation,
Can result where one, 'out-evolves' the other's 'benefit' and extinction occurs!
Perhaps this questions the thought of a loving deity,
Guiding 'all its creatures' to a perfect existence.

Summer Splashes of Red opus 621

It is July and the White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows
Have long departed.
The feeders are empty and quiet after a winter's bustling.
Suddenly, there appeared a beautiful House Sparrow pair--
Sparrow-brown, but the male with splashes of red
On chest, neck, and crown of the head.
How joyous that little dinosaurs of another ilk
Have come to feed and amuse my eyes with their dancing!

Dinosaur Footprint Hunting opus 731

While teaching in Lesotho, Africa,
I had my first child, Pierre,
Who at two, 'followed' me around the countryside,
Collecting bees at night 
And finding dinosaur footprints in daylight.
This, all between my biology classes at the University.
One spectacular trip was to a large valley,
Where there were myriads of tumbled sandstone blocks,
Strewn randomly throughout the area.
I slowly walked amongst these boulders,
When suddenly I found my first prints.
A large, three-toed series of impressions,
Spread across the flat surface.
I carried with me plaster of paris, a water container,
Strips of cardboard and a clutch of paperclips.
I made a cardboard border around the print,
Tied together at the ends, with the necessary clips.
Water and plaster were mixed to a soft-solid consistency;
Then poured into the void, the print primed with vaseline.
Several prints were cast and then the waiting time.
Each was pulled up and removed, now in a solid state.
These prints were made in the seventies
And many remain today (2026) on my farm to our delight.
The five decades of preservation here on the farm,
Equals nothing to the 60 million years of waiting in the sandstone,
To be admired by humans today--
They, nowhere to be found during this creature's long past reign.