From Bones in a Box... ...to Heroes in Hollywood

1
From Bones in a Box... ...to
Heroes in Hollywood!
Dinosaur Valley Museum paleontologist studying
recently-discovered sauropod braincase.
(Source http//www.mwc.mus.co.us/dinosaurs)
2
The Importance Of Bones

• Exposed bones on the surface at the Big Bend dig
  site

3
The Bone Controversy

• Pieces of the hip bone from the Tyrannosaurus rex
  named "Sue" lie unassembled at Chicago's Field
  Museum shortly after they were delivered from
  Sotheby's auction house, where the museum
  purchased them for 8.4 million.

(Source http//www.discovery.com/area/discovery
news/news971107/news1.html)
4
Removing the Bones
UT-Dallas staff documenting bones in Big Bend

• UT-Dallas staff carrying bones out of the desert

Some bones require cranes and trucks to move them
(Sourcehttp//www.lights.com/fossil)
5
The Paleontology Lab
Staff carefully removing fossils from large
blocks of rock.
(Source http//tyrrell.magtech.ab.ca/tour/preplab
.html)

• Collections area and bones from the Dalton Wells
  Dinosaur Quarry in Utah.

(Source http//www.mwc.mus.co.us/dinosaurs)
Windows to the Prep Lab let you watch preparators
work.
6
Preparing the Bones

• Tools are adapted from many professions.

A young volunteer carefully removes rock from a
50-million-year-old fish skeleton.
(Source http//www.mwc.mus.co.us/dinosaurs)
7
Skeleton Reconstruction
(Source http//www.mwc.mus.co.us/dinosaurs)
Measuring sauropod limb bones

• Aligning sauropod vertebrae

Reconstructed dinosaur skeletons on display at
the Smithsonian Museum
(Source http//www.nmnh.si.edu)
8
Developing The Story
Life-sized reconstruction of T. rexs left hind
leg with foot skeleton.
(Source http//www.mwc.mus.co.us/dinosaurs)

• Artists idea of how the Late Cretaceous might
  have looked.

(Source http//www.nmnh.si.edu)
Bones from the Big Bend site were deposited in an
ancient riverbed.
9
Plant/Animal Fossils

• Sandstone slab with more than 520 fresh-water
  herring from Green River Fm.

(Source http// www.mwc.mus.co.us/dinosaurs)
Turtle fossil from Green River Fm.
Petrified trees are also found at the Big Bend
dig site.
10
Tracks
Trackway with 2 sets of prints Iguanadon and
Megolasaurus.
(Source http//www.stone.uk.com/dinos/)

• This theropod track is in the Morrison Formation
  (Jurassic) of eastern Utah. Notice the greater
  depth of the track in the toe region, which
  suggests a horizontal posture for the dinosaur
  while it was walking.

(Source http//www.emory.edu/GEOSCIENCE/HTML/dino
tracks.htm)
Iguanodont track, left, compared to a meat-eating
dinosaur track.
(Source http//www.nmmnh-abq.mus.nm.us/nmmnh/foot
prints.html)
11
Teethmarks
Tyrannosaurus rex skull from the American Museum
of Natural History in New York. It is an exact
replica of one of the best-preserved T. rex
skulls ever found, and one can see there again
the large carnivore teeth.
The end of this limb bone from Apatosaurus has
parallel toothmarks on it. The spacing of the
tooth marks, as well as the individual marks
themselves, help to identify what dinosaur was
feeding on this apatosaur.
(Source http//www.emory.edu/ GEOSCIENCE/HTML/din
otooth.htm)
12
Gastroliths
(Source http//www.emory.edu/GEOSCIENCE/HTML/dino
gastro.htm)

• These could be gastroliths, or they could be just
  polished stones. One of the major criteria for
  suspecting gastroliths in this case is that these
  specimens were found in Mesozoic rocks that were
  known to contain dinosaurs. Specimens are in the
  Museum of Western Colorado's Dinosaur Valley,
  Grand Junction, Colorado.

13
Coprolites
(Source http//www.emory.edu/GEOSCIENCE/HTML/Dino
copro.htm)
This coprolite is most likely from a sauropod,
owing mainly to its large size (about 40 cm
diameter), and age (Jurassic) it is from the
Morrison Formation in eastern Utah and the
specimen was in the Löwentor Museum of Stuttgart,
Germany. Individual dinosaur coprolites actually
can be quite small (the body size of the tracemakers. For example,
modern mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and elks
(Cervus canadensis) of North America, animals
that can weigh more than 100 kg but leave many
individual pellets less than 1 cm in diameter.
14
Eggs Nests
(Source http//www.emory.edu/GEOSCIENCE/HTML/dino
eggs.htm)
One of the more spectacular dinosaur fossil finds
of recent years was of a Late Cretaceous specimen
of Oviraptor that was found in a sitting position
directly over its nest. This find, a wonderful
combination of trace fossils and a body fossil,
represents one of the most compelling pieces of
evidence for brooding behavior in dinosaurs. This
fossil find is currently on display at the
American Museum of Natural History in New York
and was illustrated in a National Geographic
article.
15
Skin

• This model at Dinosaur Valley provides an idea of
  how dinosaurs might have looked.

(Source http// www.mwc.mus.co.us/dinosaurs)
A natural cast of the skin of a hadrosaurian
dinosaur, preserved in sandstone. The skin had a
pebbled structure and was devoid of scales.
(Source McGowan, p. 23)
16
Artistic Rendition
Sketch of Allosaurus
(Source www.mwc.mus.co.us/ dinosaurs/gallery.htm)

• The World of Dinosaurs
• Commemorative Stamps

(Source www.mwc.mus.co.us/ dinosaurs/firstday.htm
)
17
Animated Models

• Full-sized Tyrannosarus rex head, purchased from
  the Dynamation company which makes robotic
  dinosaurs. The skin, and the color, of course,
  are an artistic and scientific guess.

(Source www.bcc. hawaii.edu/dinos)
Fully robotic Allosaurus Fragilis created for the
McKinley Museum of Science and History in Ohio.
Cut-away shows inner workings of pneumatic system.
(Source www.panix.com/spoerri)
18
Famous Dinosaurs
Dino

• Godzilla

Jurassic Park
(Source www.tbssuperstation.com)
Gertie
Barney Company
(Source www.pathfinder.com/ altculture/aentries/g
/godzilla.html)
(Source www.dinosaur.org/Gertie6.htm)
19
Dinosaur Myths

• Dinosaurs represent failure extinction.
• Dinosaurs and humans coexisted.
• Dinosaurs were either all hot-blooded or all
  cold-blooded.
• The word dinosaur means terrible-lizard.
• Whatever you read in the latest dinosaur book
  must be true.
• Dinosaurs all lived and died at the same time.
• Mammals arose after the dinosaurs, and helped
  drive the dinosaurs into extinction by eating
  dinosaur eggs.
• An asteroid (or comet) killed the dinosaurs.
• All big reptiles from the prehistoric past
  Monsters are dinosaurs.
• Archaeologists dig up dinosaurs.

20
New Discoveries
UT-Dallas crews will continue to explore the Big
Bend area and discover new fossil finds.
Zhangheotherium quinquecuspidens is a
symmetrodont mammal that lived about 120 to 140
million years ago during the Mesozoic Era. This
nearly complete skeleton offers the first glimpse
of what these animals looked like and what
ecological role they played in a world dominated
by dinosaurs. (Photo Dr. Zhexi Luo)
(Source http//www.discovery.com/area/
discoverynews/news1.html)