You've probably heard me mention the Best Western Denver Southwest several times here on the blog: they are the folks who are changing their hotel into a dinosaur themed natural history museum/hotel extravaganza! Well, the lobby is now complete, as is much of the rest of the dinosaur themed paraphernalia around the grounds! Just a few more things are awaiting completion, but the hotel looks fantastic! I thought I'd share some pictures of the hotel for you guys here! For your information, the credit for all of the photos in this post goes to the Best Western Denver Southwest, unless it is otherwise noted or there is a stuffed Triceratops named Pyg in the picture! But first, you should meet the stars of the hotel: the Tally family!
First, let's start on the outside of the hotel! Here are the initial plans for the outside of the hotel:
And here is who greets you now when you walk inside: Stanley, the Stegosaurus!
Now, the lobby only just recently finished construction. Until recently, the lobby entrance looked like this:
The lobby just finished construction and looks GREAT now, but first let's look at a few more construction pictures, just so you can get a feel for how far along everything has come! First let's take a look at the pool! In the far future, the room should be partially enclosed from the outdoors!
At the beginning of construction, this place looked like it does in the picture below with Meredith!
A few months later, we have their two children, Caroline and Joe Tally, talking about the future plans for the pool with a camera crew from the BBC!
Finally, here are some pictures of the pool from very recently, it is now finished!
At least, the pool itself is finished. Sometime starting next year, the Tally's will be hiring someone to create a tile mosaic of some creatures that inhabited the Western Interior Seaway (which you can read more about HERE). Oh....and did I forget to mention that the pool is in the shape of the seaway? Pretty frickin' awesome if you ask me!
Now, a few pictures back, I mentioned that Joe and Caroline were talking to a BBC camera crew. What was that all about? Well, as you can imagine, this whole dinosaur hotel idea has been pretty popular to a whole lot of folks, and has made an appearance across a very wide range of media, one of which was a BBC story about it! Check out the link HERE! I also have several pictures of the filming! First off, we have several pictures of the camera on Greg!
As you might have noticed in the video, the film crew also stopped at the Morrison Natural History Museum, my place of work! There they interviewed the director and curator Matt Mossbrucker, and you can see a few of those pictures below!
Here the film crew watches as Matt excavates part of an Apatosaurus skull named Kevin upstairs in the lab!
Another big break for the hotel came from The Oatmeal! We have a lot to cover here in this post so I won't take the time to delve into it myself, but you absolutely HAVE to check it out by clicking HERE: it is fantastic, I guarantee it! These three screenshots below are credited to The Oatmeal!
It doesn't stop there, though! The Tallys have also been featured in Entrepreneur magazine! Here is a picture of the article, and you can read it yourself by clicking the link HERE!
And on the lighter side of things: have you ever heard of the popular YouTube series My Drunk Kitchen? If not, make sure to check it out because it is hysterical: but especially make sure to check out the episode with the hotel and the museum in it! Suffice it to say, the Tallys have definitely found their way down many different avenues of pop culture!
I don't really find it that surprising: what they're doing is freaking awesome! Check out these murals that they are having painted on the back of the building! The first one is a sort of walk through time, featuring all sorts of fun animals! The close up below is of a prehistoric mammal called Uintatherium!
Here's another mural for you to check out:
As if that isn't enough awesome paleo art for you, hanging in the rooms will be copies of some of the watercolors made by an awesome paleontologist named Arthur Lakes who excavated a lot of cool things from the area, including some of the bones that we have in the museum!
There are also some awesome banners hanging on the poles outside the hotel!
These aren't the only reasons why the hotel is super cool, though: not by a long shot! Usually every week, they have a Bird of Prey show and a Jungle Lady show!
First some pictures from the bird of prey shows! First, a few pictures of Anne Price holding a barn owl!
Next, we have a picture of her holding a turkey vulture!
The Jungle Lady is really cool too, here are some pictures of the animals that she brings, too! Here's Meredith with the albino Burmese python!
And an albino hedgehog!
Here's a picture of a veiled chameleon named Prince Charming!
This post is really long: I am splitting it up into two parts! Check back next time to learn about what REALLY makes the dinosaur hotel a DINOSAUR hotel!
On Thursday, I published the first of our two-parter "Top TenVultures" posts, all in honor of International Vulture Awareness Day! (Learn more HERE.) In the last post, we looked at only the Old World Vultures, a group of birds that are native to Asia, Africa, and Europe. Today, we will be looking at the New World Vultures who, despite their name, are not actually very closely related to the Old World Vultures at all! Instead, the similarities in body design between the two different groups is a result of one of my favorite topics of all time, convergent evolution! So let's do it: the last five of the top ten! Meet my favorite five New World Vultures! (For the previous post in the Top Ten Vultures duology, click HERE.)
5. Number five on the list is the turkey vulture, a classic vulture for us Coloradans! The only vulture alive today in Colorado (I suppose the occasional black vulture may wander in from the south), the turkey vulture is what many people think of when they hear the word "vulture." I have noticed a lot (thirty or more) of turkey vultures circling this one place on the CU Boulder campus, so I am planning a little excursion to figure out what it is that is drawing them to that particular spot in such large numbers! Recently, the folks at the Raptor Education Foundation brought a turkey vulture in to the Best Western Denver Southwest, a fun hotel that is currently undergoing renovations to become a functioning natural history museum! (REF website HERE, BWDS website HERE.) So here are some awesome pictures from that event! If you guys ever get a chance to check out one of the presentations given by the folks at the Raptor Education Foundation, you definitely should go, it is a REAL treat! In the pictures below, you can see the curator of the foundation, Anne Price, holding the turkey vulture, while the director, Peter Reshetniak (background), tells us a great deal about the bird!
4. With nearly a ten foot wingspan, the California condor is the largest flying bird in North America! (If you're having trouble visualizing ten feet, either go purchase ten one-foot long rulers and lay them end to end or, more simply, go find a good-sized California condor and stretch out its wings. That's probably the best visual right there.) The California condor is unfortunately labeled "Critically Endangered" by the IUCN, and it has experienced a pretty good comeback, and hopefully will continue to do so well into the future! According to the IUCN website, the last six remaining wild individuals were brought into captivity for captive breeding purposes, making the species "Extinct in the Wild." However, due to intense involvement from scientists, the species is on the rise, with around 213 individuals in the wild!
3. Meet the only fossil vulture on our Top Ten list, Phasmagyps! Some paleontologists are unsure whether Phasmagyps is actually a vulture, and this uncertainty is definitely understandable, as Phasmagyps is known from but a single bone! If it is a vulture, then Phasmagyps might be the oldest known New World vulture! Discovered in a Colorado quarry containing a number of fossils belonging to a 35 million year old rhinoceros called Trigonias, this single bone is now housed in the collections facility of the University of Colorado Boulder! I'm not really sure what I'm doing yet, but I've tried to input a request to check out the bone, we'll see how that goes!
2. Meet the Andean condor, one of the largest flying birds alive today, with more than a ten foot wingspan! With an incredible lifespan of over 75 years in captivity, the Andean condor, much like most animals that live for a very long time, does not reproduce very quickly: and therein lies its vulnerability. If, say, half of the population of Andean condors was shot in one year by humans, then it would take much longer for the population density to regain its former glory. By contrast, if you destroy half of the population of, say, rats, then they would almost certainly regain their former numbers very quickly, as they reproduce at an alarmingly fast rate. (The same principle applies to the California condor, who we talked about above.) Fortunately, the Andean condor is nowhere near as vulnerable to extinction as its close relative, the California condor.
1. At last, we come to my most favorite vulture of all time: the king vulture! This guy is absolutely ridiculous looking, resembling a cross between a vulture, a turkey, and who knows what else! It also has a very fun scientific name: Sarcoramphus papa! Don't exactly know what it means, but I like to think it has something to do with being the Vulture Daddy. I found on some sources online that the blood and feathers of the king vulture were used by the ancient Mayans to help cure disease, but I couldn't find any more information on that: all I found was the exact same sentence copied over and over again: "The bird's blood and feathers were also used to cure diseases." An enigmatic sentence for a very engimatic looking bird. But let's face it: it just looks awesome.
Thanks again for joining us today! I do hope I have made you more aware of vultures of an international level! But seriously, check out their page: http://www.vultureday.org/2013/index.php
