The Statue of Liberty
On July 4, 1884 France presented the United States with an incredible birthday gift: the Statue of Liberty! Without its pedestal it’s as tall as a 15-story building. She represents the United States. But the world-famous Statue of Liberty standing in New York Harbour was built in France. The statue was presented to the U.S., taken apart, shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in crates, and rebuilt in the U.S. It was France’s gift to the American people.
It all started at dinner one night near Paris in 1865. A group of Frenchmen were discussing their dictator -like emperor and the democratic government of the U.S. They decided to build a monument to American freedom and perhaps even strengthen French demands for democracy in
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their own country.
At that dinner was the sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (bar-TOLE-dee). He imagined a statue of a woman holding a torch burning with the light of freedom.
Turning Bartholdi’s idea these bones nes are about t 40 million n years older than n those of Odontochelys. helys.
“Now we’ve got an intermediate diate shell, shell a transitional form that bridges the gap between turtles and other reptiles and helps explain how the turtle shell evolved,” says Tyler Lyson, a Yale University scientist. into reality took 21 years. French supporters raised money to build the statue, and Americans paid for the pedestal it would stand on. Finally, in 1886, the statue was dedicated. around your stomach stomach! Th That t diffi difficulty lt could ld b be why no other animals evolved to have the same kind of shell as a turtle.
“If you incorporate your ribs into a protective shell,” says Lyson, “then you have to find a new way to breathe.”
Turtles and other shelled creatures use shells like shields to protect themselves from predators, or animals that hunt them. Turtles probably needed a shield on their backs and stomachs because they faced predators in the ocean from both above and below.
Lyson hopes to study how turtles’ breathing evolved to work best with their special shells.
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