After I posted this video, Matthew Mossbrucker, the director of the Morrison Natural History Museum, commented on the post, with some very important and interesting information! Here is what Mr. Mossbrucker had to say:
"Quite a few folks have pondered this through the years - myself included. Allow me to put on my Dr. Ruth field hat for a moment. Heinrich Mallison's concept of the African stegosaur Kentrosaurus mating seems plausible to me. I've assumed this myself as a default mating position for these animals. My read of the tail base in Stegosaurus is a bit different than Brian Switek's analysis. While it is true that our North American stegosaurs had limited up-down motion at the base of the tail, stegosaurs do something for ornithischian dinosaurs: they have the ability to twist their tails in a corkscrew-like fashion. I can envision a standing female Stegosaurus twisting her tail to one side and therefore removing obstacles for her mate. Unlike the boated models in your photo, a living Stegosaurus would have been able to stand and even walk on its hind-limbs with grace. So, therefore I see no barrier putting a male into mating position. So, there you have it."
There we have it indeed! I hope you find that enlightening, as well as the video! The dilemma definitely makes more sense after hearing what Mr. Mossbrucker has to say!
The second of a pair of songs that I made especially for Stegosaurus Week! "The Stegosaur Song" to the tune of "The Mexican Hat Dance." Below is the link to the song:
[Chorus:]
Oh, the plates and the spikes like the head of a trike with them you definitely don't want to mess
The stegosaurs lived in the Jurassicbut some lived to the dawn of the Cretaceous
Here we will learn 8 Truths About the Stegosaurus.
This is the third video in our "Animal Truths" series. Make sure to check out the other two we have made so far, "8 Truths About the Mountain Lion" and "17 Truths About the Cheetah," below!
Stegosaurus lived in western North America during the Late Jurassic Period, about 150 million years ago (MYA). Today, we find its remains in the Morrison Formation, named after the tiny town of Morrison in Colorado. What was going on in Colorado at that time? What was the depositional environment like, the environment that laid down the sediment that would one day become the famed Morrison Formation?
Well, according to paleontologist Dr. Robert Bakker in an article about the re-discovery in 2002 of some old paleontological quarries (CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE) in the Smithsonian Magazine, the environment was very much like the kind of environment seen in Uganda today: a “hot tropical woodland that was dry for most of the year.”
What about the animals, though? Dr. Bakker also said in the article that to “understand the Late Jurassic, you need to understand the common animals, which means Apatosaurus.” Most people are familiar with this massive animal: about 100 feet long (around the length of three school buses put end to end to end), and weighing around as much as eight African elephants, Apatosaurus was definitely a heavyweight of the Morrison biota!
What other animals were running around though? There are a great many dinosaurs, as well as many other animals, that were living in this area at that time, but in this post we are only going to look at one more: Camptosaurus and Allosaurus. All right, I lied. We’ll look at two more.
First off, we have Camptosaurus. To be honest, Camptosaurus doesn’t really look all that special. A small- to mid-sized ornithopod, Camptosaurus was only about fifteen feet long, and didn’t really appear to have any obvious defenses. However, discoveries of articulated Camptosaurus skeletons (indicating that the bones were fossilized were they were deposited, i.e. where the animal died, and weren’t washed together in a big mumble-jumble like at Dinosaur National Monument) in close conjunction with articulated Stegosaurus skeletons seems to indicate that these two herbivores liked to hang out together. But why? Why would they open themselves up to competition and potential conflict like that? Well, analysis of the brains and skulls of these two animals suggests that perhaps by hanging out together, the dinosaurian duo could avoid much deadlier conflict. Studies have shown that the sensory organs of Camptosaurus and Stegosaurus would have differed in very critical ways. The sense of Stegosaurus would have been akin to a rhinoceros, or perhaps myself as well (at least without my contacts), in that it would have had a pretty good sense of smell, but not very good vision. Camptosaurus, on the other hand, appears to have had quite acute vision, which has led to an interesting proposition by researchers: that Camptosaurus acted as a lookout for herds of Camptosaurus and Stegosaurus. If a predator was spotted (say, an Allosaurus or a Ceratosaurus), then Camptosaurus would have been able to alert the herd, and Stegosaurus would have been able to move to the forefront to defend them all against attack.
The last dinosaur that we are going to look at today is Allosaurus, a large, meat-eating theropod dinosaur. It occurs to me as I type this that I have done a very thorough job on Allosaurus before, so instead of typing this all again, I am going to be lazy and redirect you to another post that I did awhile back, entitled “23-Fact Tueday: Allosaurus.” Hidden within the post (but not too hard to find) are 23 Facts about Allosaurus. Yeah. Pretty much says it in the title. Anyways, check out that post to learn more about Allosaurus, as well as the rest of the Morrison ecosystem! And make sure to check back tomorrow, as we learn about stegosaurs from the rest of the world!
Want to learn more about Stegosaurus? Well, check out the Homebase for Stegosaurus WeekHERE to partake in more of the festivities!
The horns and frills of Triceratops. The tube-like crest of Parasaurolophus. The two crests of bone on Dilophosaurus. The sail on Spinosaurus. What function do these various bells and whistles that adorned these so-called "Terrible Lizards" serve? For years, most paleontologists assumed that they were for the sole purpose of combat, be it against predators, or the inter-specific variety. But now, more and more paleontologists are looking to birds to answer the question of functionality when it comes to these bony dinosaurian protuberances.
But what, specifically, about birds is it that is helping paleontologists figure out the purpose of these structures? It all boils down to an interesting phenomenon called "sexual selection." Most people are familiar with the term "natural selection." Popularized by Charles Darwin, natural selection essentially states that animals that are unfit to survive and reproduce in a given environment will die, and will be unable to add their genes to the genepool. (Certainly an oversimplified definition, but you get the picture.) Sexual selection, on the other hand, is a mode of natural selection, and introduced by Charles Darwin, as well. Sexual selection states that some individuals in a given population will be more likely to breed than other individuals will because they will stand out above the rest of the population. There are many ways of doing this, and birds are but one example. Horns and antlers are one instance: typically, if an animal has larger horns or antlers, they will be able to not only fend off predators better (i.e. natural selection), but they will be more likely to be able to fend off other males, and be more likely to be picked for the females (i.e. sexual selection). In many animals, form overcomes functionality in this endless quest for a mate, especially on insular (or island) populations. One of my favorite examples of this is the birds of paradise from New Guinea, as you can see in the video below.
That's all well and good, but how does that apply to the dinosaurs that we were talking about above? Well, for years, paleontologists assumed that dinosaurs like Triceratops and its relatives were using their horns and frills to fight off predators. Well, for Triceratops, that makes sense: with forward-facing horns and a two-inch thick frill, fighting off Tyrannosaurus doesn't seem that far out of the realm of possibility. However, upon examination of many of the other relatives of Triceratops (collectively called ceratopsian dinosaurs), you can see that, perhaps, not all of these frills and horns evolved to fight off predators. Below we have just one example. The picture you see is of a skull that below belongs to a ceratopsian dinosaur called Einiosaurus. As you can see, it does not seem anywhere near as well equipped for fighting off predators as Triceratops does. For example, its frill has a pair of massive holes in it. Furthermore, of its three horns, one points downwards, and two point towards the sky at about a forty-five degree angle. Unless Einiosaurus was being attacked by giant woodchuck-like, burrowing dinosaurs, or being dive-bombed by Tyrannosaurs in F-14s (as seen in Calvin and Hobbes!), it is difficult to see how Einiosaurus might have defended itself against its predators using its frill and horns. Another analogy I like to make is this: if you are a knight going into battle, you don't necessarily want to have a pair of giant holes in your shield, and your sword bent and pointing towards the ground.
So how does this all tie in to Stegosaurus? Well, a same sort of discussion has centered around Stegosaurus for many years. Were the plates used for defense? Or were they used for something else? First let's address the idea of defense. IN THE PREVIOUS POST, we discussed the thagomizer, the group of tail spikes, on the rear end of Stegosaurus. These tail spikes were almost certainly used to fend off enemies, and seemed to have done a very good job, too. So, if you think about it, if you were to cover a stegosaur in these spikes, it would be almost impervious to attack, right? Well, what's interesting is that, early in stegosaur evolution, many of these animals actually did have a lot more spikes than Stegosaurus did. As a matter of fact, the plates of Stegosaurus are nothing more than heavily modified spikes! Below, we have a few more primitive stegosaurs, all of whom demonstrate the fact that, prior to Stegosaurus, many of the plates were actually spikes!
So if the spikes were better than plates were at defending an animal against predators (which is the only logical conclusion that I think people can draw from the data at hand), then why did some of the stegosaurs change? For many years, paleontologists thought that they had a pair of answers to this interesting dilemma. The first was the idea that perhaps Stegosaurus used its plates as a thermoregulaton device. If the animal was too cold, then it could turn its body so that its plates faced the sun, maximizing its surface area that was facing the sun, and enabling it to warm up quicker. The reverse would have also worked: when it became to hot, Stegosaurus could turn perpendicular to the sun, minimizing the surface area that was absorbing the sun. Another theory was that Stegosaurus could flush blood to the plates, turning them a brighter color. This could have either frightened off enemies, or instead it could have been used to attract a mate.
These two ideas seem fairly good in theory: however, much like the skull of Einiosaurus, there are a few massive holes in this logic. If Stegosaurus used its plates as a thermoregulatory device, why do close relatives of Stegosaurus have very different plate shapes, or sometimes fewer plates altogether? If there was one design that these animals used to warm up or cool down, one would imagine they would all converge on the same design. But they didn't, which casts some serious doubt on the whole thermoregulatory idea.
There are two theories that seem to hold the most water today. The first one has the same general idea that the "flushing the plates full of blood" idea has: make yourself more noticeable, as these plates were very impressive looking structures. And, since they alternated down the back (SEE THE FIRST STEGOSAURUS WEEK POST HERE), then a side-on look of Stegosaurus would have been a very impressive sight, indeed! Other stegosaurs of the opposite sex would undoubtedly think so, and these plates probably served a large role in attracting a mate! Predators might have thought that the side-on view was impressive, too, and this might have caused them to think twice about attacking Stegosaurus. It also might have caused other members of the same species to back down, too, in cases where inter-specific combat might have otherwise come into play. As Matt Mossbrucker, the director and curator at the Morrison Natural History Museum likes to say, "think a skinny kid in a puffy coat."
Finally, the plates might have helped stegosaurs to differentiate from one another. This is a tactic often used in animals today (again, the birds of paradise and many other birds: see the last paragraph of our post on the cichlids of the Great African Rift Lakes HERE), and is thought to have been a tactic used by many extinct animals, as well. For example, the various horns and frills of the ceratopsian dinosaurs (like Triceratops and Einiosaurus that we were talking about before) are now thought by many paleontologists to have been used to tell each individual species apart, and its possible that that is what the stegosaurs were doing, too.
Want to learn more about Stegosaurus? Well, check out the Homebase for Stegosaurus WeekHERE to partake in more of the festivities!
This Saturday at the Morrison Natural History Museum in Morrison, Colorado, we will be celebrating Stegosaurus Day, in honor of Colorado's state fossil! (To learn more, click HERE to
be redirected to the Facebook page of the Morrison Natural History
Museum!) So, in honor of Stegosaurus Day, The Natural World is going to
have ourselves a little Stegosaurus Week! Each day, we are going to be looking at a different aspect of Stegosaurus, and today, we are going to be looking at the tail spikes on the tail of Stegosaurus, nicknamed the thagomizer! What were they used for? Did they actually use their tail spikes for defense? And how about that funky name: where did the term "thagomizer" come from? Well, learn those answers and more in today's post for Stegosaurus Week!
Remember IN THE LAST POST OF STEGOSAURUS WEEK when we mentioned paleontologist Ken Carpenter and his very complete and articulated Stegosaurus skeleton? Well, in 1993, when Carpenter was presenting his findings, he first used the term "thagomizer" to describe the tail and spikes of Stegosaurus. Without even knowing its backstory, it seems like a fitting name: but its true origin is even more interesting! For those of you who have enjoyed Gary Larson's fantastic "The Far Side" comic strip, then you may already know where we are heading with this! One of my favorite "Far Side" strips is the one above, and, interestingly, it is from this strip that Ken Carpenter got the name "thagomizer!"
Now, one question that has stumped paleontologists for years is, how were the spikes arranged on the thagomizer? Nowadays, we know that there were two sets of spikes, and they are thought to have been about 180 degrees from each other, forming a horizontal line. (For a more complete discussion, see the last post in our Stegosaurus Week series, entitled THE GENUS STEGOSAURUS THROUGH TIME.) But other questions stumped paleontologists, too. For example: what was the thagomizer used for? It definitely looks like a very apt defensive weapon, but for a long time, paleontologists had no clues to help them figure out whether defense was actually the answer.
One source of evidence that Stegosaurus and other stegosaurs were using their thagomizers to defend themselves is that many of the spikes have broken tips. Now, just because a fossil is broken, doesn't necessarily mean that it was broken during the animals life. Paleontologists can tell whether or not a bone was broken during the life of the animal by looking to see whether the bone shows any signs of healing. If the fossilized bone shows signs of "remodeling," then the bone broke during the life of the animal, and then started to heal while the animal was still alive. Following the death of an animal, if somehow a bone becomes broken, it's not going to heal: the animal is already dead! In a study that examined 51 tail spikes of Stegosaurus, researchers found that about 10% of these spikes had broken tips whose bone had started to grow back. So clearly, these spikes weren't just for show, and were actually being used for something.
The best evidence that paleontologists have right now that indicates that Stegosaurus was using its thagomizer to defend itself against predators is an Allosaurus tail vertebrae with a hole in it: a hole exactly matching the kind of hole that a thagomizer would have made! What's very interesting about this fossil is that, while damaged bone in the vicinity of the hole shows signs of healing (indicating that the Allosaurus survived, at least for a little while, following its encounter with Stegosaurus, and that the damage to the vertebrae was not post-mortem), the hole itself doesn't seem to have healed at all. This has caused some paleontologists to hypothesize that part of the tough outer sheath that would have surrounded the tail spikes in life, probably making them sharper and pointier, of a Stegosaurus became stuck in the tail vertebrae, remaining lodged within the tail vertebrae of that particular Allosaurus, until the animal died!
This Saturday at the Morrison Natural History Museum in Morrison, Colorado, we will be celebrating Stegosaurus Day, in honor of Colorado's state fossil! (To learn more, click HERE to
be redirected to the Facebook page of the Morrison Natural History
Museum!) So, in honor of Stegosaurus Day, The Natural World is going to
have ourselves a little Stegosaurus Week! Each day, we are going to be looking at a different aspect of Stegosaurus, and tonight, we are going to be looking at the genus Stegosaurus as a whole, and how our concept of Stegosaurus has changed over time! Let's dive on in! Stegosaurus was first discovered by famous paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh during the Bone Wars (a paleontological competition from Marsh and rival paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope) in the late 1800s, and was first described by him in 1877. When Stegosaurus was first described by Marsh, he wasn't really sure what it was: he actually thought that it might be a turtle-like creature, as you can see in his illustration from above! This reconstruction explains why Stegosaurus has its name: covered, shingled, or roofed reptile. It wasn't until Marsh and his crew found other, more complete specimens of Stegosaurus that he was able to figure out what the animal looked like with a greater degree of accuracy, which you can see in the reconstruction below.
The reconstruction above, while much closer to what we think Stegosaurus looks like today than the first reconstruction, nevertheless has several key differences from today's reconstructions. One of the main issues that paleontologists face when reconstructing Stegosaurus and its relatives from fossils is that the plates aren't attached to any bones. The plates are modified osteoderms, used in many different animals to protect themselves from attack (a more extreme example of which can be seen in the close relatives of stegosaurs, the ankylosaurs). Like the osteoderms in other animals, such as the ankylosaurs, the osteoderms would sort of "float" in the skin, only attaching to the rest of the skeleton by means of softer tissues, softer tissues that don't typically fossilize. What paleontologists really needed was an articulated specimen of Stegosaurus.
Well, that's exactly what paleontologist Ken Carpenter got in the 1990s! Using this very complete and articulated specimen, Carpenter and his colleagues were able to solve a number of Stegosaurus mysteries. For example: the exact placement of the plates. In Marsh's 1890s reconstruction above, you can see that he had positioned the plates in a single row running down the back. Later reconstructions by other scientists had been created with a double row of plates, which was proven to be correct by Carpenter's specimen. It was also shown that the plates alternated down the back, as opposed to the side-by-side reconstructions sometimes seen.
Another mystery that Carpenter's specimen was able to solve is the number and placement of the tail spikes. As you can see in Marsh's 1890s reconstruction above, he hypothesized that Stegosaurus had four pairs of spikes, and that they pointed upwards at around 10-15 degrees from the vertical. Carpenter's specimen, coupled with further research, has shown that, to the best of our knowledge, no species of Stegosaurus had that many tail spikes: in fact, from what we know, all species of Stegosaurus had two sets of tail spikes, for a grand total of four. We also now know that, instead of the spikes being about 10-15 degrees from the vertical, they were almost certainly horizontal to the ground! This hypothesis is backed up by investigations into the flexibility of Stegosaurus's tail: to successfully bring its tail spikes into play in the 10-15 degree arrangement, Stegosaurus would have had to have a tail much like a scorpion, and all research done up to this point indicates that Stegosaurus had nowhere near that much vertical flexibility in the tail. However, the horizontal reconstruction makes much more sense, as the tail seems like it would have had a great deal of side-to-side flexibility.
The final main difference between Marsh's 1890s reconstruction and our reconstructions of Stegosaurus today lies in the way it held its tail and its neck. Due to the Dinosaur Renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s led by John Ostrom and his pupil Robert Bakker, the perception of dinosaurs as lumbering failures changed dramatically to what it is today: not failures of evolution, but instead, a remarkable success that shaped the evolutionary course of the Earth for millions of years. This change in perception is reflected in how we think dinosaurs moved: we no longer think that they dragged their tails on the ground, barely able to keep their heads from dragging in the mud. Instead, we view them as much more nimble than we once thought. And while Stegosaurus may not have been the nimblest of them all, you can clearly see how our ideas of how we think this animal moved around have changed over the years.
This Saturday at the Morrison Natural History Museum in Morrison, Colorado, we will be celebrating Stegosaurus Day, in honor of Colorado's state fossil! (To learn more, click HERE to be redirected to the Facebook page of the Morrison Natural History Museum!) So, in honor of Stegosaurus Day, The Natural World is going to have ourselves a little Stegosaurus Week! This post will serve as the Homebase for the weeks festivities! Below, we have a schedule of what I hope to have us talk about this week: we'll see whether I end up sticking to it or not! I am also going to be making a few videos, as well, so be on the lookout for those!
So I've started a new video series in which I answer questions about animals that you guys have. I finished Episode 1 today, and if you click on the link below you can watch it, too!
CLICK HERE TO LEARN THE ANSWERS. I decided I would also write out the questions and answers here, just in case some of you would rather read the questions and answers, instead! So here they are, in all of their glory and splendor!
Ever since the fantastic book Jurassic Park came out in 1990, people started to wonder: could this actually happen? Could we actually bring dinosaurs to life via the miracle of cloning? Following the release of the movie in 1993, the idea was on the mind of even more people. Sadly, (or perhaps fortunately), from what we understand about DNA at this point, we simply cannot clone dinosaurs, not even by using mosquitos trapped in amber. DNA is a very fragile molecule, and does not take all that long to break down. Sure, mammoth mummies frozen in the permafrost inSiberia have successfully yielded DNA. Mammoths, however, only went extinct several thousand years ago. From a geological standpoint, mammoths, you and I lived practically at the same time as each other, when compared to how long ago the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Furthermore, the permafrost has acted as a freezer, helping to preserve the DNA in ideal conditions for scientists to extract it from the mammoth at a later date. So to sum up? To the best of our knowledge, Jurassic Park: not happening. However,Pleistocene or Ice AgePark may not be all that far off!
2. Why dosea ottershold hands while they’re sleeping?
Sea otters often do this to keep themselves from drifting apart from other sea otters. Although adult sea otters generally forage for food by themselves, they will often form large groups, called “rafts,” sometimes numbering as many as 2,000 individuals. When in these rafts, to avoid floating apart from each other, they will sometimes hold hands. They will also sometimes tie themselves to kelp when they are sleeping or feeding to keep from floating away, as well.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the great auk (Pinguinus impennis), thispenguin-like creature (a product ofconvergent evolution) inhabited the NorthAtlantic Oceanin the Northern Hemisphere, and became extinct mid-way through the 1800s. The great auk was intensely hunted by humans inEuropeanwaters for their down feathers, (which were actually used in both pillows and hats), as well as for food. (Not the down feathers, mind you, but the meat of the bird and its eggs). It wasn't until 1553, around the time that the nesting sites of the great auk had been all but eliminated on the European side of the Atlantic, that the great auk first became officially protected. In 1775, people who had broken a law forbidding people from killing the great auk for its feathers were actually beaten publicly! Following the local extinction of the great auk inGreenland in 1815, the sole remaining breeding site of the great auk was a small, volcanic island. Off of the coast ofIceland, the island was dubbed "Geirfuglasker," after the Norse term for "great auk," "Geirfugl." In 1830, however, the great auk population on Geirfuglasker came under siege by two elemental forces that it had no hopes of combating: an underwater volcanic eruption and a subsequent earthquake, which combined to destroy the island, terminating most of the rest of the great auks. That’s not to say that the volcanic eruption and volcano are to blame: humanity definitely takes the bullet for that one.
If you have any questions yourself, ask me here at the blog, email me at cuyvaldar123946@gmail.com, comment below the video, or tweet them at me @TNaturalWorld1. Thanks for watching/reading/whatever you did!
What comes after seven? Well, if you subscribe to a linear view of time, then generally eight! So here is my eighth song! And let me tell you, she is an absolute DOOZY! Say hello to "Hey There Mass Extinction," to the tune of "Hey There Delilah" by Plain White T's! Below is the link to the song:
Here are the lyrics to the song:
Hey there mass extinction, what's it like to have no pity
I'm a thousand miles away
But still the light it is so pretty, yes it's true
But it'll boil the flesh off me and you, I swear its true
Hey there mass extinction don't you worry about the distance
The sonic boom will be here shortly, burst your eardrums, you can't listen
Close your eyes
If you open them again, they'll probably fry
You'll surely die
Hey there mass extinction
I know times are getting hard
The sun is covered by a lot of dust
And seems so very far
Away, not good
I can't survive on simply wood
But no one could
Hey there mass extinction
I think hunger's here to stay
Death is coming soon for me and you
It'll take our breath away
And down we'll fall Mosasaurs, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, all
We just can't stall
A thousand miles seems pretty far
But the entire planet it will mar
Earthquakes will cause the entire Earth to sway
Evolution this event will suppress
And yet something must survive because
We know
That you are hearing my angel's voice today
Mass extinction I can promise you
The outlook now is bleak its true
The world will never ever be the same
And you're to blame
Hey there mass extinction
You've destroyed my family tree
Temporarily weakened the genetic pool
And now the dinos are history, sad but true
You know its all because of you Mammalian radiation will ensue
Hey mass extinction here's to you
This one's for you
Here we have the second song I made and, in my opinion, quite possibly the best, ESPECIALLY the singing! Below is a link to the parody:
Make sure to check out the music video, here!
Here are the lyrics to the song:
Sittin' here avoiding predation
Don't want to end up somebody's meal
Fortunately I've got built in protection
I'm a tank and that is for real
Gotta have some dermal armor this evening
Protect myself in case of a fight
Gotta have some dermal armor this evening
Gotta have protection
Just in case I get in a fight
Dermal armor
I want some dermal
Dermal armor
Ankylosaurs make their foes blood curdle
My skin has turned as hard as my bone Armadillos, pangolins and the turtle
The shell is just my mobile home
Gotta have some dermal armor this evening
Protect myself in case of a fight
Gotta have some dermal armor this evening
Gotta have protection
Just in case I get in a fight
Dermal armor
Dermal
Dermal armor
Derm, derm, derm, Dermal
Arm, arm, arm
Derm, derm, derm, dermal
Arm, arm, arm
Bony scales, plates, or other structures
Collectively called osteoderms
It's almost impossible to make these rupture
Bludgeon them and they will stand firm
Yeah, yeah
Impossible to make these rupture
Bludgeon them and they will stand firm
Yeah, yeah
Impossible to make these rupture
Bludgeon them and they will stand firm
Yeah yeah
Are you diggin' the songs? Well, then check out our playlist below!
When we drove down to visit my Gramma Roo in Texas in December of 2011, we went to this fantastic museum called the Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country. Although pretty small, the museum was still utterly fantastic! Built next to a number of tracks from the Cretaceous Period, the museum was an excellent way to learn all about the local paleontology and geology of Canyon Lake and the surrounding area! First off, we have a picture of a reconstructed theropod dinosaur named Acrocanthosaurus, the presumed trackmaker.
Next, we have a ton of pictures of the trackways and footprints that are assumed to belong to Acrocanthosaurus!
Now, in the picture below, do you see the parallel marks leading towards the Acrocanthosaurus reconstruction? Those are thought to be the track of an odd-looking snail whose shell is really long and kind of flops over to the side, where it drags and leaves that mark! Pretty crazy, huh!
Before we left, I looked around and found a lot of fossils all over the place! The area was chock-full of them!
In 2006, my family and I went down to Georgia (we were lookin' for a soul to steal) to visit our really good friends the Guinees (we were way behind, and we were willing to make a deal). On our trip, we visited what is now one of my most favorite museums of all time: the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. While Fernbank certainly has a large number of really cool exhibits, easily my favorite one was the one around which most of the museum is built: an enormous room with a Giganotosaurus attacking an Argentinosaurus, one of the largest theropod dinosaurs known to science attacking one of the largest sauropod dinosaurs known to science. It was simply fantastic! In the upper levels of the atrium thing, you could also see fossil skeletons of various pterosaurs, and there was also a fossil crocodile on the ground floor! Fantastic!
Another thing that I thought was really cool was a large, life-size statue of Stegosaurus outside of the museum! Below is a picture of my sister and I acting like dinosaur in front of it!
All of the photos in this post were taken by Julie Neher.
Another really cool museum that my family and I visited in California was the California Academy of Sciences. They had lots of really cool exhibits! My favorite was a prehistoric mammals exhibit, but unfortunately, pictures weren't allowed inside, so therefore I don't have any pictures! We also didn't get to visit the whole museum, but the parts that we did we all really enjoyed! But I did get a few pictures of some of the other really cool things, so here they are! A brief overview of the California Academy of Sciences! Enjoy! First, we are going to look at what they call "The Living Roof," which is a cutting edge....garden. However, although it does sound a bit unexciting, it was actually pretty cool, as the cutting edge garden was on the roof! (Hence the name "The Living Roof," in case you missed that part.) It actually always reminds me of the Shire from Lord of the Rings!
Although I didn't get any pictures of any prehistoric mammals, I did get a picture of another prehistoric animal! Does anybody know what it is?
One particular exhibit was called "Rainforests of the World," which, as you can imagine, focuses on the worlds rainforests. It was really cool, and it was all inside of this enormous dome thing! But yeah here are some pictures from inside of the dome!
Finally, the last thing that we saw that I thought was really cool was this: an albino alligator! Definitely don't see those every day!
