The Dino Hotel Nears Completion! Part 1

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!

Next, we have Anne holding a Harris hawk, while Peter Reshetniak holds a great-horned owl!

 Here, Peter still holds the great-horned owl!

 Peter takes a turn with the Harris hawk!

Next, we have a picture of Peter holding a screech owl!

Finally, two kids are enthralled by the red-tailed hawk!

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!

Dinosaur Provincial Park

As we talked about IN A PREVIOUS POST, dinosaurs are pretty big in Canada.  A large number of dinosaur species have been discovered up there, and one of the best places to find dinosaurs is a place near Calgary in Alberta called Dinosaur Provincial Park.  As a matter of fact, Dinosaur Provincial Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with 981 other properties "which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value."  Other famous sites include the Great Barrier Reef in Australia; the Galápagos Islands; Stonehenge; the Grand Canyon; and "Memphis and its Necropolis," the site of the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza!  Just to name a few.  Do you get the idea, though?  Dinosaur Provincial Park is kind of a big deal!

But why?  What makes a bunch of badlands with some dinosaur bones in them so important to Canada, much less a committee dedicated to protecting such international treasures as the Great Barrier Reef and the Great Pyramids?  What makes Dinosaur Provincial Park so GREAT?  (Get it?  Nevermind, it wasn't that funny anyways.)  Here's what the UNESCO website has to say about the park:

The property is unmatched in terms of the number and variety of high quality specimens, over 60 of which represent more than 45 genera and 14 families of dinosaurs, which date back 75-77 million years. The park contains exceptional riparian habitat features as well as "badlands" of outstanding aesthetic value.
The committee also included two main criterion that show why the park is so important:

Criterion (vii): Dinosaur Provincial Park is an outstanding example of major geological processes and fluvial erosion patterns in semi-arid steppes. These "badlands" stretch along 24 kilometers of high quality and virtually undisturbed riparian habitat, presenting a landscape of stark, but exceptional natural beauty.


Criterion (viii): The property is outstanding in the number and variety of high quality specimens representing every known group of Cretaceous dinosaurs. The diversity affords excellent opportunities for paleontology that is both comparative and chronological. Over 300 specimens from the Oldman Formation in the park including more than 150 complete skeletons now reside in more than 30 major museums.

Wow. Well that's a pretty big deal!  According to the website, between 1979 and 1991, a grand total of around 23,347 fossils were collected, including an amazing 300 dinosaur skeletons!  As mentioned above, the dinosaur skeletons represent every known group of Cretaceous dinosaurs.  (I assume that they mean every group that is known to live in North America at the time.)  Not only does the sheer amount of fossils allow for a more complete view of an extinct ecosystem, new dinosaurs and other animals have been discovered there, as well as potential behavior that can be inferred from the fossils! 

During the Late Cretaceous North America was divided by the Western Interior Seaway, a shallow, continental sea.  (To learn more about the seaway, check out a recent post I did on it by clicking HERE).  In Dinosaur Provincial Park, you can find the remains of both ocean going animals and land dwellers, as well!  The park is, of course, famous for its dinosaurs (as you could probably tell from its name).  But many of the marine creatures entombed in the rocks there and in the surrounding area are pretty awesome, as well!  For example, Hybodus, an interesting shark!  

Before we get to the dinosaurs, let's check out a few other cool creatures found in the park!  One of these is a creature we mentioned in a previous post: the post entitled "There Be Dragons," all about the monitor lizards!  In the post, I had a picture of a prehistoric monitor lizard named Palaeosaniwa attacking a flock of Ornithomimus.  Well, both of these creatures have been found in the park!  Below is the picture, created by talented paleo-artist James Field!  You can check out his website HERE!

Many animals have been discovered in the park, including turtles, crocodilians, and a ton of plants, but the only other non-dinosaur we are going to look at for now is a small little primitive marsupial mammal called Eodelphis!  Eodelphis, whose name means "early opossum," is thought to have weighed a little over a pound which, astonishingly, means that it was one of the largest mammals of its time!  It is thought to be related to Didelphodon, another Mesozoic marsupial mammal, who we shall meet in an upcoming post!

Now for the dinosaurs!  I'm going to start with an animal called Centrosaurus.  A ceratopsian dinosaur (just like Triceratops), thousands of individuals specimens of Centrosaurus have been discovered in a massive bonebed that extends for hundreds of meters!  While paleontologists disagree as to exactly what killed all of these animals, and in such immense numbers, the prevailing theory is that this was a herd of animals that drowned while trying to cross a river.  The individuals that make up the herd vary widely in age, which is one of the lines of evidence which supports the herd idea.  This is important evidence for paleontologists, as it indicates that these animals lived in groups!  

Another dinosaur that is found in the park is the small pachycephalosaur called Stegoceras, who is not to be confused with the similarly named and much more famous Stegosaurus!

Here is another fun dinosaur, called Chirostenotes!  This oviraptorosaur was first found in the park, and is definitely quite funky looking!

Dromaeosaurus, a distant cousin of Chirostenotes and a closer relative of the famous Velociraptor, was also first discovered in the park!

Just as Dromaeosaurus has been pushed from the limelight by Velociraptor, so too has Daspletosaurus been pushed by Tyrannosaurus!  Daspletosaurus is a tyrannosaur as well, and was first discovered in (surprise surprise) Dinosaur Provincial Park!  Two more Dinosaur Provinicial Park natives (and firsts) are Euoplocephalus, one of the tank-like ankylosaurs, and Parasaurolophus, a hadrosaur or duck-billed dinosaur!

I can't WAIT to visit the park one day!  In the meantime, HERE is a link to the park's website so you, too can plan your visit!

Calgary on Dwellable

Boulder Submerged: Not So Strange 70 Million Years Ago!

Where I live in Boulder, Colorado, we aren't used to having a whole lot of moisture.  For the last few days, however, we have been experiencing record breaking levels of rain: as a matter of fact, the sheer amount of rain that we are being inundated with has resulted in enormous levels of flooding, complete with evacuations, destroyed homes and roads, and unfortunately several deaths.  I am actually writing this Thursday evening after having my very first flood day, and we have a flood day tomorrow, too!  (And now I am finishing the post on Sunday and we are STILL getting rain!)  Despite the fact that all of this water in Boulder is quite unusual, if you were to travel back 70 to 100 million years ago right here in Boulder, water wouldn't be the exception: it would be the norm!

You see, 70 million years ago, there were no Rocky Mountains.  In fact, Colorado was nowhere near a mile high above sea level: it was about three hundred feet below!  Due to the fact that what would one day be Colorado was still located on continental crust, the Western Interior Seaway couldn't be super deep: nevertheless, three hundred feet deep was deep enough to contain an enormous assortment of fun creatures!  We've already met a large number of these creatures throughout different posts in the blog, but let's take another look at these guys, as well as other fun filled creatures of this ancient seaway!

Let's start on the shore: multiple dinosaur trackways throughout the nation (including two that I've been to, Dinosaur Ridge near Morrison and the Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country) show that many different dinosaurs roamed the shore of the Western Interior, including large ornithopods and large theropods.  Some of these dinosaurs actually died and were swept out to shore, such as the ankylosaur Niobrarasaurus!

Pyg chilling inside of a cast of one of the large ornithopod footprints from Dinosaur Ridge at the Morrison Natural History Museum

They weren't the only dinosaurs that lived on the shore, though: meet the flightless, cormorant-like bird Hesperornis!  Originally discovered by famous paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, Hesperornis grew to around six feet in length, and looks very similar to the Galápagos flightless cormorant via the process of convergent evolution!

Hesperornis probably ate a wide variety of fish, squid, and an interesting group of extinct marine vertebrates called ammonites.  Some ammonites could grow to simply ENORMOUS proportions, such as the one in the top left of the picture below, one from the Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country that I mentioned above.  Found all over the country (and, as a matter of fact, the world), one particular ammonite site looks like it might be a nesting site!  To learn more about this ammonite nesting site, click HERE to check out a guest post by paleontologist and physicist Wayne Itano!

Ammonites were by no means the largest creature in the Western Interior, however, and neither was Hesperornis.  As a matter of fact, neither of them were all that close at all!  Hesperornis was relatively close to the bottom of the food chain, a fact that we know conclusively due to the discovery of one particular specimen of an interesting animal called Tylosaurus in South Dakota.  Tylosaurus was a type of animal called a mosasaur, whose closest living relatives today are the monitor lizards (like the Komodo dragon and the Nile monitor).   Contained within the stomach cavity of this particular Tylosaurus specimen were the remains of a fish, a smaller related species of mosasaur, and a Hesperornis!  Platecarpus remains, one of those smaller mosasaurs, are sometimes found within the belly of the Tylosaurus, the belly of the beast!

Paleontologists are always very excited when they think they've found the fossilized remains of a predator with the remains of its prey still inside.  This can help establish a predator/prey relationship between the two creatures, a relationship that might otherwise have simply been theorized.  Fortunately for us paleontologists, multiple critters in the Western Interior Seaway have been discovered with other little critters within their stomach cavity!  One of these, which I have nicknamed "The Inception Fossil," we actually did a whole post about a few months back!  Entitled "Xiphactinus: The Inception Fossil," this post was all about a fish called Xiphactinus and why I called it "The Inception Fossil."  As you might have already guessed from the context, the nickname stems from the "fish within a fish" idea: Xiphactinus is often found with other fish inside of its stomach!  Below, you can see one of these Inception Fossils, where a Xiphactinus died shortly after swallowing a fish called Gillicus.

Xiphactinus and Gillicus were by no means the only fish in the sea!  The other day, my friend Sam Lippincott and I visited the Denver Gem and Mineral Show.  We both purchased several fossils there, and one of my purchases was a small tooth of another Western Interior Cretaceous Seaway (WIKS) fish called Enchodus.  The name of this fish roughly translates to "spear fish," and from the picture below, you can probably see why: this fish was definitely made to catch some other fish!  Fossils attributed to Enchodus have been found on either side of the K/T boundary, meaning that this fish seems to have survived the extinction that killed off the non avian dinosaurs, and many of the marine creatures as well!

It looks to me like this tooth may be one of the large protruding teeth on the upper part of the jaw.

Pyg checks out her new Enchodus tooth from the Denver Gem and Mineral Show!

I got another tooth from another fish that would have inhabited the Western Interior: this tooth belongs to the shark Squalicorax!  When fully grown, Squalicorax was around the size of the living great white shark, and would have prowled the oceans much like sharks do today.  As a matter of fact, sharks have survived relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years!

Pyg checks out the other tooth she purchased at the Denver Gem and Mineral Show, a Squalicorax tooth!

Next, we have a funky looking group of reptiles that look like nothing that we have on Earth today!  These are the plesiosaurs, and some of them could grow pretty large!  Remember before how we mentioned that Hesperornis was discovered by a guy named Marsh?  Well, Marsh had a paleontology rival named Cope.  This rivalry got kind of out of hand, and resulted in something that today we call "The Bone Wars."  (To learn more about the Bone Wars from the ridiculously funny "The Oatmeal," make sure to click the link HERE!)  One of the particularly famous instances in this paleontological skirmish was when Marsh's rival, Edward Drinker Cope, reconstructed one of these plesiosaurs.  Called Elasmosaurus, Cope accidentally placed the head of the animal on the tip of the tail instead of in its proper place at the end of the neck.  As you can imagine, Marsh took the opportunity to mock his rival.  This also sets up the perfect joke for The Oatmeal, but I won't spoil it for you: you have to check it out for yourself!

Although there were other plesiosaurs that swam through the ancient North American seas, my favorite is the funky looking Dolichorhynchops!  This type of short-necked plesiosaur has also been found in the stomach of the enormous Tylosaurus!

Dolichorhynchops is most definitely not a familiar face to your average Joe, but what about Archelon?  This massive sea turtle also inhabited the seaway, and is actually the largest sea turtle known to science!  This guy is about 13 feet long, which is about twice as long as the leatherback sea turtle, who are the largest living sea turtles!  And although Archelon looks similar to sea turtles today, it definitely doesn't look like the turtles we have in Boulder!

Just as the floodwaters are subsiding, so too did the Western Interior Seaway drain from the center of the North American continent.  As the Rocky Mountain started getting pushed up and the elevation got higher and higher, the shallow sea got shallower and shallower, until there was nothing left.  Nothing left, that is, except for the fossils that we find today!  And who knows, maybe the floodwaters from the recent storms have eroded away some overburden, revealing some prehistoric marine fossils beneath!

Harris Hawk at the Dinosaur Hotel!

A few times now, I have mentioned the fantastic dinosaur-themed renovation that the folks over at the Best Western Denver Southwest.  Complete with life-sized models, museum quality casts lining the hallways, and a pool in the shape of the Western Interior Cretaceous Seaway, this is a hotel that paleo-fans of all ages won't want to miss!  Another awesome thing they do is a weekly raptor show on Saturday's at 5:00 PM.  I don't mean raptor like Velociraptor (which would be both amazing and terrifying at the same time), I mean bird of prey raptors.  But don't be too disappointed: they are still really super cool!  I went for the first time last Saturday, and was blown away by both the birds and the knowledge and passion of the presenter, Anne Price.  I plan on sharing many of these birds with you, and today I am going to share one of my favorites from last week, the Harris hawk!

In this picture, you can see the Harris hawk is not too happy about the great-horned owl being held by another volunteer about ten or fifteen feet in front of it!

There are three different subspecies of the Harris hawk, and this one was native to the Sonoran desert, in the American southwest.  Although sometimes the other sub-species will live in more forested areas, this particular type of Harris hawk prefers a desert life.  

Due to the fact that much of what lives in the desert is spiny, the Harris hawk learns from a very young age how to pick spikes and thorns out of its feet, especially the spines of the saguaro cactus.  This particular cactus is SO huge and so integral to the surrounding ecosystem that it is illegal in Arizona to either harm or destroy a saguaro cactus!

When abbreviated, the scientific name of the Harris hawk, Parabuteo unicintus, spells "P. u."

Unlike many raptors, the Harris hawk is a very social bird, hunting cooperatively in packs often numbering four or five individuals.  These packs, or family groups, will often have one or two of the birds fly down low to flush out prey, and once the prey is on the move, the rest of the pack will swoop in for the kill.

 

Since it is so darn hot in the Sonora Desert,  the adult Harris hawks are forced to shield their nests, with their offspring inside, with their outstretched wings to keep them from cooking alive.  If the "shield-bird" has to move, for whatever reason, an aunt or an uncle or just another member of the pack will instinctively swoop in to take up the shielding duties!  

I feel like since the Harris hawk lives in groups, it would be more tolerant of other birds.  Since they kept the Harris hawk out almost the entire time, even while the other three birds were out, this would make sense.

You can see in the picture above and the picture below that, while the Harris hawk wasn't too bent out of shape because of the presence of the great-horned owl, it wasn't necessarily super excited about it.  I mean, let's face it: if you or I were a hawk in the presence of this incredible owl, I might be a little nervous, too!

Like in most other birds, the Harris hawk is pretty much full-sized when it leaves the nest, since it has to be able to fly, feed, and take care of itself.  When their entire volume is taken into account, the young apparently are often bigger than the adults!  I don't remember exactly why that would be, but most likely due to the fact that the young have just been sittin' around on their heinies, and their parents have been working their heinies off to feed and care for them.

As you can sort of see in the picture below, the innermost toe claw of the Harris hawk, and most (if not all) hawks, is much larger than the other two forward-facing toe claws.  As you can probably see in the picture above, the hallux, or backwards-facing claw, is also much larger than those other two forward-facing claws.  I don't recall if this is a feature seen in other raptors, I'll make sure to ask this Saturday!

I also have a short video that I took there of the Harris hawk.  You can see how it looks, get a good size comparison, and listen to a little bit of the information that Anne has to say about it!

Here is a second video where the Harris hawk is featured, however briefly.  Although it features the red-tailed hawk, at one point the hawk poops on the floor, which unfortunately happens off camera!

Finally, here is another video in which the Harris hawk makes an appearance.  You can see when the camera pans over to the Harris hawk (the cinematography, by the way, is reminiscent of Star Wars or Planet Earth or something like that) that the Harris hawk, like we talked about before, is not terribly happy about the great-horned owls presence so close to it, but it is tolerating it nonetheless.  Despite the fact that it doesn't feature the Harris hawk all that much, it's still a really cool video, and will give you a hint for what's in store for later posts!

Make sure you check out the website for the Raptor Education Foundation by clicking HERE, and checking out the Facebook page for the Best Western Denver Southwest by clicking HERE!  

There Be Dragons

I think when it comes to reptiles, easily the most interesting are the monitor lizards and their relatives.  The monitor lizards are scientifically known as the members of the genus Varanus within the family Varanidae (which, in turn, is a family within the superfamily Varanoidea), and are widely considered to be the lizards with the most intelligence.  The largest extant (still living, opposite of extinct) lizard today, the Komodo dragon, is a member of this family, as is Megalania (often referred to as Varanus prisca), the largest known lizard ever to have existed.  Let's learn a bit more about these interesting reptiles!

According to a paper by American biologist Eric Pianka (link included in References section), the monitor lizards as a group are thought to have evolved on the continent of Laurasia (see map below) earlier than 65 million years ago (MYA), before even the dinosaurs died out.  After evolving in Laurasia, they then dispersed into the continents of Africa and Australia.  As of the writing of his paper, 44 species of monitor lizard are around today, with around 27 of these native to Australia, where the highest species density of monitor lizards are.  In the tropics of northern Australia, up to ten species of Varanus can reside together!

There are numerous families related to the monitor lizards within the superfamily Varanoidea, both living and dead, such as the earless monitor lizard, the sole member of the family Lanthanotidae.  The other extant family within the superfamily Varanoidea is the family Helodermatidae, which includes the beaded lizards and the Gila monster from southwestern North America, Mexico, and Guatemala.  However, in my opinion, it is the extinct family Mosasauridae that is the most interesting of the monitor lizard relatives.

The mosasaurs were the dominant marine predators throughout the Late Cretaceous Period, and were wiped out by the traumatic K/T Extinction Event, just like the dinosaurs.  Some of these mosasaurs could grow to enormous lengths, such as Tylosaurus, the apex predator of the Western Interior Seaway of North America during the Cretaceous Period.  Tylosaurus could grow to an enormous 50 or so feet long, and fossil discoveries of the stomach of this creature indicate that it fed on pretty much everything that swam in the sea: the remains of sharks, the flightless diving bird Hesperornis, fish, plesiosaurs, and even smaller mosasaurs have been found in the stomachs of Tylosaurus fossils!

The mosasaurs share something else in common with the monitor lizards: they both have a third eye on top of their head.  It's not the same as the eyes we have on our head, or even the eyes that the mosasaurs and monitor lizards have on their heads, either. A good comparison is if you close your eyes and look at a light source, and then move your hand back and forth in front of your face.  You can see something moving , right?  Just a shadow, but you can still tell that something is there.  That's kind of what the third eye of the monitor lizards and the mosasaurs is like.  If you are a baby Tylosaurus swimming in the sea and you see something pass overhead, you are going to swim to safety as fast as you possibly can: there are a lot of things in this sea that would barely noticed they swallowed you.  However, if you are a 50-foot long adult Tylosaurus and you see a shadow swim above your head, you are almost certainly going to go investigate.  Whatever it is, it's probably edible!

Another interesting thing that the mosasaurs most likely shared with the monitor lizards is their forked tongue, similar to that of snakes.  But what purpose does this forked tongue served?  Well, when the animal sticks the tongue out of its mouth, it is smelling the air.  As it draws the tongue back in, scent particles are pulled in as well.  The fork-tongued creature is able to determine which side of the forked-tongue has more scent particles on it.  If the animal was attempting to locate a dead animal or something like that, and its head was facing directly towards where the dead animal scent particles were floating from, the reptile would know that it was on the right track.  If, however, the fork-tonguer was facing due north, and the dead animal was due west of its position, when the tongue is drawn into the mouth, its owner can tell that there are more dead animal scent particles on the left side of the tongue, as opposed to the right, and now knows which way it must go to find its meal.  Pretty neat!

Can't get enough of the monitor lizards?  Well, below I have links to five videos featuring some monitor lizards (one spiny-tailed monitor, four Komodo dragon)!  Enjoy!

Spiny-Tailed Monitor Attempted Feeding

Komodo Dragon Moving Around at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

Komodo Dragon Relaxin' to the Maxin'

Up Close and Personal With The Komodo Dragon at the Cheyenney Mountain Zoo

Komodo Dragon Close Up at the Denver Zoo


And now, for some pictures of various monitor lizards I have taken over the years! First off is Herkemer, the resident Dumeril's Monitor Lizard at the Morrison Natural History Museum!

Next, we have a few photos that I took of one of the Komodo dragons at the Denver Zoo.

After that, we have a few Komodo dragon pics that I took at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo!

Finally, we have a trio of pictures that I took of some tree monitors at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, as well!

And now, last but certainly not least, we have some pictures of some baby Komodo dragons at the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona!  They are pretty darn cute!
This was the birthday post of Gookhyun Jeong, happy birthday big guy!  And remember, if you have a birthday coming up, just email me the date at cuyvaldar123946@gmail.com with the date and your favorite animal, and I will do my best to get a post in! 

References:

http://www.conservation.org/FMG/Articles/Pages/gila_monsters_human_health_mexico.aspx

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/varanus.html

The Story of the Kremmling Ammonite Site and a Painting by Wayne Itano, Guest Blogger

Today, we have a very exciting post for you: a guest post from paleo-enthusiast Wayne Itano!  Here is a bit of background on Mr. Itano:  

Wayne Itano is a physicist at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) in Boulder, CO.  He has a hobby interest in paleontology and is also a curator adjoint at the Natural History Museum of the University of Colorado.

Today, Mr. Itano is going to tell us about the Kremmling Ammonite Site.  Join me in giving him a warm welcome!  Let's get started!

The Kremmling Cretaceous Ammonite Locality lies on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land to the north of the little town of Kremmling, in Grand County, Colorado.  It was first noticed for the very high concentration of very large ammonites(ammonites are extinct relatives of the modern chambered nautilus and were probably more closely related to octopi and squids).  It has been protected since the 1980s.  It was written up in the book “Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway” by the paleontologist Kirk Johnson and the artist Ray Troll.

Dr. Kirk Johnson, formerly of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, is now head of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Ray Troll is an artist with a special interest in natural history and ancient life.  Here is his painting “Night of the Ammonites” inspired by a visit to the Kremmling Ammonite Locality.

Artist Ray Troll’s picture of the Kremmling area, about 73 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, when most of Colorado was beneath the sea.  Picture Credit: Ray Troll

The large disk-shelled creatures are ammonites called Placenticeras.  The ones with narrow, straight, tapered shells are another kind of ammonite, called Baculites. The sharp-toothed swimming reptiles are called mosasaurs.  We have evidence from bite marks on ammonite shells that mosasaurs preyed on Placenticeras.  Over on the left are some strangely shaped small ammonites called Anaklinoceras.

The Kremmling site was featured by Earth Magazine, in a kind of online quiz called “Where on Earth.”  The page with the question and answer is HERE.

If you want to visit the Kremmling site, first pay a visit to the BLM office at 2103 E. Park Avenue, Kremmling.  They can advise you on road conditions.  At times it can be inaccessible, even for 4-wheel drive vehicles. Here is a sign at the site:

Warning sign at the Kremmling Ammonite protected area.  Photo Credit: Wayne Itano

Here is an informational sign.  Collecting is prohibited within the site, but there are nearby areas where collecting is allowed.  Inquire at the BLM office.

Explanatory sign at the Kremmling site.  Photo Credit: Wayne Itano

The area is littered with boulders containing the impressions of giant Placenticeras ammonites.  The fossils themselves have been collected, many to museums.  Intact boulders containing ammonites lie under the surface and could be studied in the future.

Boulders with impressions of Placentideras ammonites.  Photo Credit: Wayne Itano

Baculites (straight ammonites) are also rather common. 

A Placenticeras ammonite impression with a Baculites fossil (cylindrical object) on the same boulder.  Photo Credit: Wayne Itano

Large clams called Inoceramus are rather common.  Here are some examples.

A large Inoceramus clam fossil.  Photo Credit: Wayne Itano

A boulder with impressions of Inoceramus clams.  Photo Credit: Wayne Itano

Emmett Evanoff, a professor at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, has been studying the paleontology of this area.  One odd thing is that the great majority of the Placenticeras fossils are of females.  (The males are distinguished by being much smaller and having coarse ribs on their shells.) He thinks this might have been a nesting site.  The males would have fertilized the eggs and then left, leaving the females to guard the eggs.  Katie DeBell was a student of Emmett’s who mapped out the ammonites on the surface and seems to know them all by number.  She lives in Kremmling and often gives tours, especially to school groups.  Here she is, pointing out some features of one of the ammonites.

Katie DeBell explaining some features of an ammonite in 2011.  Photo Credit: Wayne Itano

I have a vacation house in the mountains not far from Kremmling.  I happen to know a painter who is also a fossil enthusiast, named Terry McKee.  I commissioned him to do a painting of the Kremmling site when it was an ammonite nesting ground.  I also asked Dr. Evanoff for advice, and the three of us met to plan the painting.  Here it is, and the original is now hanging in my mountain house.

Painting of the Kremmling Ammonite nesting site.  The large ammonites are guarding their eggs.  Baculites and various smaller ammonites, swim above.  The small round ammonite on the left, facing left, between two of the straight baculites, is a male Placenticeras.  A mosasaur lurks in the background.  Picture Credit: Terry McKee

- Wayne Itano

Thank you very much, Mr. Itano, for the post!  The post was really interesting, and I know I learned a lot!  I found the part about the nesting site particularly interesting!  I have no doubt that my readers, as well as myself, would love to hear from you in the future!  Thanks again! - Zack Neher

Bronze Tree on Dwellable