Jurassic World Premiere at the Alamo Drafthouse

Currently, the crews of the Morrison Natural History Museum and the Best Western Denver Southwest are manning a large booth in the lobby of the Alamo Drafthouse of Littleton, Colorado, taking part of the hype that has accompanied the release of the new Jurassic World movie.  People have been clawing to get in and see the movie, and are pretty excited to see some awesome fossils and fossil casts right there in the lobby!

The Acrocanthosaurus arm clawing its way towards the Alamo Drafthouse building.

We brought over several of the awesome casts that are (usually) on display in the lobby of the Best Western Denver Southwest Dino Hotel, including a Uintatherium skull, one of the Brachiosaurus femora, a Camarasaurus skull, and the prize of the exhibition, the Acrocanthosaurus skull and arm!

Fran, the most complete skull of Acrocanthosaurus ever discovered.  A giant cousin of Allosaurus, this skull was discovered in Oklahoma, and would have lived during the Early Cretaceous Period, around 110 million years ago.  The dinosaur was first described in 1950 by paleontologists J. Willis Stovall and Wann Langston Jr.

A skull of the long-necked sauropod dinosaur Camarasaurus, statistically the most common dinosaur discovered in the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation.  This Camarasaurus specimen, nicknamed "E.T.," was discovered at the Howe Stephens Quarry in Wyoming.  Check out his page on the Black Hills Institute Website by clicking HERE.

A Tyrannosaurus rex arm picks the nose of the Acrocanthosaurus.  Now that's something you don't see every day.

Matt Mossbrucker, the entire Tally family clan, Justin Sewell from TheOneRing.net, and myself have been here since Thursday, talking with folks before and after their movie experience.  Part of what makes the Alamo Drafthouse experience particularly interesting is they do a half hour preshow, where they pull awesome old footage and fun videos that relate to the feature presentation, so you get to enjoy a half hour of awesome old dinosaur footage as well!  So definitely come on by and say hello, and enjoy the movie while you're here!

From left to right: Joe Tally, Greg Tally, and Caroline Tally doing very important science.

Matthew Mossbrucker, Director and Chief Curator of the Morrison Natural History Museum, poses next to the gigantic femur of the Brachiosaurus, with the Acrocanthosaurus skull slung over one shoulder and the Camarasaurus skull in the other.  Imagine how cool you would look carrying that Brachiosaurus femur around in a hotel parking lot. 

Merlin Barnes, Outreach Specialist at Dinosaur Ridge, our neighbors both at the Drafthouse and in real life.

I got to watch Jurassic World this afternoon, and I was very pleased with the movie, I thought it was very entertaining and a great movie overall!  For the next few days, I'm going to spend as much time as I can talking about different aspects of the movie, both accurate and inaccurate aspects of it, for all of your reading and viewing pleasure!  Some topics I plan to talk about include:

• Pterygoid teeth
• Shed teeth
• Feathers
• Faculative bipedalism
• Herding and group behavior
• Defensive tails
• Head butting
• Dinosaur hands and rabbit paws
• Venomous and poisonous dinosaurs
• Threat displays
• Paleo art
• Opposable thumbs
• Pterosaur diets
• Dinos in the snow
• Maybe even a little cuttlefish talk too

I had a lot of fun watching the movie, and I'm still having fun talking with the crowds of people entering and exiting the theater, hyped up and excited to learn more about dinosaurs and their prehistoric contemporaries!  I'm also looking forward to using the movie as an opportunity to engage people about dinosaurs, and hopefully you who are still reading this post will, too.

Matthew Mossbrucker (left) and Greg Tally, co-owner of the Best Western Denver Southwest Dino Hotel, walk the Brachiosaurus femur out of the lobby of the hotel, on its way to the Alamo Drafthouse.  We thought it could use a nice explosion in the background, so....

....this was born.