 |
| Who knew dinosaurs had a religious affiliation!? |
Monday, May 2, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Friday Field Photo - what is it??
We spent the day down by Gateway, Colorado, prospecting and looking at various tracks in the Chinle and Wingate Formations. While looking at a huge track slab I happened to see something weird hanging from a tree branch. I took these two photo of it (horrible lighting, apologies). Unfortunately we forgot the good camera at home, the ok camera at the hotel, and were only left with my cell phone, so that is what I used. Since it was so cool and not something I had ever seen, I thought I would share it and see if anyone else could guess what it is.
Any guesses?!?!? :-)
Any guesses?!?!? :-)
[edit: check out the comments...]
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Pimp Your Ride
A friend of ours got this first shirt for his birthday tonight. The great search that ensued to find it yielded the following results:
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
 |
| Raptor Bandit Shirt via TopatoCo for $17.50 |
 |
| DinoGirl, sadly not (yet?) available in grown-up sizes, via Jusami for $26 (the smallest shirt (and short sleeved at that!!), yet it cost the most. That blows. A black, long sleeve version is on sale for $19.99 however. And a boys version is on sale for $12.99. What gives?! Whey is the girl version more expensive?! I might have to make my own, affordable, version.) |
 |
| Rodeosaur via uneetee for $19.99 |
Friday, March 4, 2011
Creation Dragons, paleoreligiology & Altoona
LOL This is a good one:
You can buy it over at Headline Shirts.
The description of the shirt goes like this:
"Archaeologists with the group Creationists in Labcoats (CIL) said they have discovered caveman drawings in the remote town of Altoona, Kansas that confirm the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs some 6,000 years ago. What's more, they said the drawings prove that dinosaurs marched two-by-two, along with all the other animals, onto Noah's Ark.
"This discovery shatters more than a century's worth of so called scientific evidence," said expedition leader, Samuel Featherstone, who is a professor of paleoreligiology at CIL. "Dinosaurs - or 'Creation Dragons,' as they will henceforth be known - did not predate humans by some 200 million years. Rather, they walked with Adam and Eve and may have even had a hand in Jesus' crucifixion."
The news has forced scholars to completely rethink the size of Noah's Ark, which is now estimated to have been roughly the size of Alaska"
Thanks to Tom H. for the heads up.
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
You can buy it over at Headline Shirts.
The description of the shirt goes like this:
"Archaeologists with the group Creationists in Labcoats (CIL) said they have discovered caveman drawings in the remote town of Altoona, Kansas that confirm the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs some 6,000 years ago. What's more, they said the drawings prove that dinosaurs marched two-by-two, along with all the other animals, onto Noah's Ark.
"This discovery shatters more than a century's worth of so called scientific evidence," said expedition leader, Samuel Featherstone, who is a professor of paleoreligiology at CIL. "Dinosaurs - or 'Creation Dragons,' as they will henceforth be known - did not predate humans by some 200 million years. Rather, they walked with Adam and Eve and may have even had a hand in Jesus' crucifixion."
The news has forced scholars to completely rethink the size of Noah's Ark, which is now estimated to have been roughly the size of Alaska"
Thanks to Tom H. for the heads up.
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Scelidosaurus now on display at the Dinosaur Discovery Track Site Museum in Saint George, Utah
Today the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm in Saint George, Utah, will unveil its newest exhibit - the first Scelidosaurus to ever be displayed in the Western Hemisphere! The museum will hold a unveiling of the specimen today, Wednesday, February 9, at 5 pm. Admission is free and refreshments will be served (all right, free food!). I caught up with Dr. Jerry Harris (director of paleontology at Dixie State College) yesterday to ask him some questions regarding this new display.
[RKHF]: What was the toughest part of the instillation and design of the new exhibit?
[JH]: Well, putting this exhibit together has been relatively easy for some pleasantly fortuitous reasons. Making signage was pretty simple because we're fortunate enough to have a really terrific poster plotter in the Science Department at Dixie State College; the biggest problem along those lines was bouncing drafts between people and collating comments from multiple people. That's the kind of thing that would be easier if everyone was consistently in the same place, which just wasn't feasible for various reasons. But as we get experience doing that kind of thing, it's getting easier!
The specimen itself was the biggest issue. For various political reasons, I won't get into some details, but getting the pieces of the replica assembled and put together in a way that can be exhibited safely and attractively without a lot of money or technical equipment and expertise (like welding) has been a bit of a challenge. As I write this, I have not seen the final product that was still being constructed yesterday [see picture below for final product]! And we'll have a second challenge along those lines when we move it to it's permanent home within the museum in late May/early June -- presently, it will be on a temporary, special exhibit devoted specifically to the animal in our designated temporary exhibit space, where it can have more associated signage and material than it will in its permanent space. Part of the challenge, both with the specimen and signage, was making it capable of being used in two different configurations of different sizes!
One last challenge we had was trying to find enough physical material to display along with the replica. Spouting on endlessly about the animal in text is easy, but an exhibit full of signs but few objects isn't attractive. Finding relevant, physical objects to display with it was more difficult. We managed to get our hands on some other (invertebrate) fossils from the same locality that also produced Scelidosaurus (one is an ammonite from the same horizon; others are from slightly higher horizons), as well as a few models (toys, really) of Scelidosaurus that will be used in a display about how perceptions of the animal have changed over time, most recently because of this virtually complete specimen of which we now have a replica. I also have some other replicas of thyreophoran dinosaurs that I use in teaching here at the college, and those will be used in a display about later relatives of Scelidosaurus: one on stegosaurs, including a Stegosaurus skull, plate, and tail spike, and one on ankylosaurs, including skulls of Pawpawsaurus and Saichania (er, Minotaurosaurus) and a Saichania tail club. Lastly, we have some displays on why Scelidosaurus is relevant to our site, even though the animal itself hasn't been found here -- in this display, we'll have some of our Anomoepus tracks, which were made by early ornithischians, possible something like Scutellosaurus, which is about the only thyreophoran more primitive than Scelidosaurus (depending on how much traction you give to the hypothesis that Lesothosaurus is a basal thyreophoran and where Emausaurus fits).
[RKHF]: How will Scelidosaurus work into your current exhibit setup?
[JH]: In late May/Early June, when we move the replica to it's permanent home, it will be up at the top (for visitors, about the last area visited) of our exhibit space, which is an appropriate area to talk about what isn't preserved at our site but could easily have been represented in one form or another based on paleobiogeography and biostratigraphy. In other words, the visitors go through our museum and see how incredibly detailed is the "snapshot" of earliest Jurassic terrestrial life that is preserved here, but it's good to also impress that "detailed" doesn't mean "complete"! While we certainly hope to fill in some of the missing pieces with discoveries from our area, it's great to be able to bring in material from elsewhere, too, that complements our existing material in order to better educate our visitors. In this case, the donation makes it possible for them to see something that they'd have a very difficult time seeing otherwise -- the only other places that one could see this specimen are the Bristol Museum (where the original specimen is on temporary display) or the Charmouth Heritage Center in England and the natural history museum in Belfast, Ireland (both with twin replicas to ours). This is the only time Scelidosaurus has ever been displayed in the Western Hemisphere, or anywhere in the world outside the British Isles!
[RKHF]: How does Scelidosaurus fit in with the whole radiation of Ornithischians?
[JH]: That's a good question! Richard Butler has been working on this issue -- not specifically, but on early ornithischian radiations as a whole. In his last analysis, it fell out more or less where it always has, as a pretty basal thyreophoran, neither a stegosaur nor an ankylosaur, but a bit more derived than Scutellosaurus (despite being about the same age). It may even be more derived than the much younger Emausaurus from northern Germany, but that specimen really needs redescription, especially in light of everything that's been learned about Scelidosaurus and both ankylosaur and stegosaur evolution and diversity since it was first described! Scelidosaurus is still, I believe, the earliest quadrupedal ornithischian known, indicating that ornithischians were beginning to bulk up even in the earliest Jurassic, possibly as a function of competition with herbivorous saurischians (sauropodomorphs) that had been big since the Late Triassic, and possibly also as a function of reduced competition as a result of the extinction of many of the other big herbivores of the Late Triassic (dicynodonts, aetosaurs, rhynchosaurs, etc.)
I'll also say that there are some workers out there that suspect that Scelidosaurus may be much closer to ankylosaurs than stegosaurs -- if that's correct, that pushes the eurypodan (stegosaurs + ankylosaurs) split much farther back in time than has been generally perceived. That would mean that there are a lot more early thyreophorans, and eurypodans, out there that have yet to be discovered -- that's exciting not only because thyreophorans are just plain awesome but also because they're rather understudied as a group, particularly this far down the cladogram! And I say this having been primarily a saurischian worker for most of my career!
[RKHF]: Can you give us any sneak peak on future exhibit plans for the museum?
[JH]: Well, come May, when the Dabney Scelidosaurus replica migrates to its permanent spot in the museum, our temporary exhibit space will be filled with another exhibit that we will make ourselves that we think will be unique in the annals of natural history exhibitions. We're calling it "Prehistorigami," and it will feature origami models of various prehistoric animals (lots of, but not exclusively, dinosaurs). The purpose will be to educate visitors about both origami as a very unusual art form with strong roots in science as well as about a variety of prehistoric animals. That exhibit will be up through the summer. In September, we'll install another exhibit (in time for SVP visitors!), though the subject of that is currently under discussion, so I can't provide more detail yet...!
I'd like to say one more thing, although you didn't ask a question specifically on this subject: the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm is deeply honored by the donation by Virginius "Jinks" and Barbara Anne Dabney, and they fully deserve all the credit for making this exhibit happen! The donation story itself is a nice exemplar of serendipity. I've been researching the possibilities of our museum obtaining replicas for a long time, something for which we could do targeted fund-raising. Given the fossils we have, replicas of, say, Dilophosaurus and Megapnosaurus would be ideal and beautifully complement our most abundant fossils, but they simply don't exist. Megapnosaurus (particularly "M." kayentakatae) hasn't ever really been molded, and what few Dilophosaurus replicas exist out there were made from molds that have long-since disintegrated. The fossils of both taxa really are too fragile to mold and de-mold safely, so it will be a long time before we can get those. So I've been looking for other things. I've known about this particular specimen of Scelidosaurus for a while, and even saw the original in Bristol during the SVP meeting there. But poking around on-line I saw a replica of it on display at the Charmouth Heritage Center. So I contacted them and asked them where they got it; they pointed me to the owner of the specimen, Mr. David Sole, and were kind enough to give me his contact information. So I contacted him; he's an incredibly nice and generous guy! He said he still had one replica available and told us what it would cost. That just happened to be the day on which our last temporary exhibit, "Dino-right, Dino-wrong," opened. So I took the information to the opening to chat about with other members of our Board, who were very excited about it. The exhibit was opened with a ribbon-cutting by the Dixie Sunshiners, and Jinks was one of them. Wandering through the exhibit after the opening ceremony, he overheard some of our Board members talking about how to proceed with the fund-raising to buy it, and mentioned that he'd like to get in on it. When pressed, he basically said he'd like to buy the whole kit 'n' kaboodle for the museum. I was literally stunned into silence by this news (anyone that knows me even a little will be surprised to hear that!)...and moved by the generosity. And as an aside, it's the easiest freakin' fund-raising I've ever done, and I say this as the kid that, when he had to sell band candy back in junior high, wasn't ever able to sell anything except the ones I ate myself!
So while I know that the dinosaur community will be heavily focused on the replica itself, I want to make sure that everyone knows that the real story here isn't the replica, but Jinks Dabney and the donation of the specimen -- all the credit goes to him and Barbara Anne!
Thanks to Jerry for taking the time to answer my questions and for alerting me to their new exhibit! I am looking forward to see it and their origami exhibit! Below is an article on the donation that was recently published in the Salt Lake Tribune. All museums should be so lucky to have such great patrons as the Dabney's! If you have not had a chance to see the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm in Saint George yet I highly recommended it. It is a very nice museum and I have to give kudos to Andrew Milner also for all of the hard work he has done there, along with his volunteers and staff [here is a link to a post I wrote about the museum in 2009]. The museum is worth the visit, so be sure to stop the next time you are in Utah!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dinosaur replica donated to St. George museum
By Mark Havnes
The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: February 4, 2011 09:42PM
Updated: February 5, 2011 12:35AM
A St. George lawyer says his nine grandchildren, who love dinosaurs, compelled him to pay for a replica of a 195-million-year-old scelidosaurus to go on permanent display at the Discovery Track Site Museum in this southwestern Utah city.
“We were in the right place at the right time to get this little sucker,” said Virginius Dabney, who contributed most of the $7,000 it cost to bring the replicated skeleton of the plant-munching beast to St. George. “Now the grandchildren can see grandpa’s dinosaur.”
The public will get an opportunity to see the skeleton Wednesday.
The model of the scelidosaurus (skel-eye-doh-SAWR-us) is based on one on display in the Charmouth Heritage Center in southern England near where the species was first discovered in 1859.
Jerry Harris, director of paleontology at Dixie State College in St. George, said that the replica will be the first one of the species on display in the Western Hemisphere.
He said the scelidosaurus roamed southwestern England during the early Jurassic period. The armor-plated dinosaur was 11 feet long and about 4 feet high, weighed three-quarters of a ton, and ate vegetation it ground with child-sized teeth.
“The replica is based on the most complete fossil [of scelidosaurus] ever found,” said Harris.
The St. George museum is built on the site of a prehistoric shoreline where dinosaurs roamed during the early Jurassic period. In 2000, a St. George doctor discovered dinosaur tracks when he turned over a slab of earth. Those tracks are on display at the Discovery museum.
Harris said that, in addition to tracks, only a few bone scraps have been found at the St. George site. But that doesn’t rule out skeletons.
“We just haven’t found them yet,” he said.
Rusty Salmon, director of the St. George museum, said the scelidosaurus replica will be the first skeleton to be displayed at the museum and she hopes there will be others in the future.
“Kids love to see dinosaurs on display, so the more the better,” she said.
Dabney said he has always had a soft spot for dinosaurs. “This is like buying a piece of history.”
His wife, Barbara Dabney, said she was a little surprised when she heard of her husband’s investment in prehistory.
“I was a little shocked at first, but once that wore off, I’m very supportive,” she said.
Original text © ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster, Photo of exhibit © Jerry Harris unless otherwise stated. Article © Salt Lake Tribune
[RKHF]: What was the toughest part of the instillation and design of the new exhibit?
[JH]: Well, putting this exhibit together has been relatively easy for some pleasantly fortuitous reasons. Making signage was pretty simple because we're fortunate enough to have a really terrific poster plotter in the Science Department at Dixie State College; the biggest problem along those lines was bouncing drafts between people and collating comments from multiple people. That's the kind of thing that would be easier if everyone was consistently in the same place, which just wasn't feasible for various reasons. But as we get experience doing that kind of thing, it's getting easier!
The specimen itself was the biggest issue. For various political reasons, I won't get into some details, but getting the pieces of the replica assembled and put together in a way that can be exhibited safely and attractively without a lot of money or technical equipment and expertise (like welding) has been a bit of a challenge. As I write this, I have not seen the final product that was still being constructed yesterday [see picture below for final product]! And we'll have a second challenge along those lines when we move it to it's permanent home within the museum in late May/early June -- presently, it will be on a temporary, special exhibit devoted specifically to the animal in our designated temporary exhibit space, where it can have more associated signage and material than it will in its permanent space. Part of the challenge, both with the specimen and signage, was making it capable of being used in two different configurations of different sizes!
 |
| The new exhibit of Scelidosaurus at the Dinosaur Discovery Track Site Museum in Saint George. Photo © Jerry Harris. |
One last challenge we had was trying to find enough physical material to display along with the replica. Spouting on endlessly about the animal in text is easy, but an exhibit full of signs but few objects isn't attractive. Finding relevant, physical objects to display with it was more difficult. We managed to get our hands on some other (invertebrate) fossils from the same locality that also produced Scelidosaurus (one is an ammonite from the same horizon; others are from slightly higher horizons), as well as a few models (toys, really) of Scelidosaurus that will be used in a display about how perceptions of the animal have changed over time, most recently because of this virtually complete specimen of which we now have a replica. I also have some other replicas of thyreophoran dinosaurs that I use in teaching here at the college, and those will be used in a display about later relatives of Scelidosaurus: one on stegosaurs, including a Stegosaurus skull, plate, and tail spike, and one on ankylosaurs, including skulls of Pawpawsaurus and Saichania (er, Minotaurosaurus) and a Saichania tail club. Lastly, we have some displays on why Scelidosaurus is relevant to our site, even though the animal itself hasn't been found here -- in this display, we'll have some of our Anomoepus tracks, which were made by early ornithischians, possible something like Scutellosaurus, which is about the only thyreophoran more primitive than Scelidosaurus (depending on how much traction you give to the hypothesis that Lesothosaurus is a basal thyreophoran and where Emausaurus fits).
[RKHF]: How will Scelidosaurus work into your current exhibit setup?
[JH]: In late May/Early June, when we move the replica to it's permanent home, it will be up at the top (for visitors, about the last area visited) of our exhibit space, which is an appropriate area to talk about what isn't preserved at our site but could easily have been represented in one form or another based on paleobiogeography and biostratigraphy. In other words, the visitors go through our museum and see how incredibly detailed is the "snapshot" of earliest Jurassic terrestrial life that is preserved here, but it's good to also impress that "detailed" doesn't mean "complete"! While we certainly hope to fill in some of the missing pieces with discoveries from our area, it's great to be able to bring in material from elsewhere, too, that complements our existing material in order to better educate our visitors. In this case, the donation makes it possible for them to see something that they'd have a very difficult time seeing otherwise -- the only other places that one could see this specimen are the Bristol Museum (where the original specimen is on temporary display) or the Charmouth Heritage Center in England and the natural history museum in Belfast, Ireland (both with twin replicas to ours). This is the only time Scelidosaurus has ever been displayed in the Western Hemisphere, or anywhere in the world outside the British Isles!
[RKHF]: How does Scelidosaurus fit in with the whole radiation of Ornithischians?
[JH]: That's a good question! Richard Butler has been working on this issue -- not specifically, but on early ornithischian radiations as a whole. In his last analysis, it fell out more or less where it always has, as a pretty basal thyreophoran, neither a stegosaur nor an ankylosaur, but a bit more derived than Scutellosaurus (despite being about the same age). It may even be more derived than the much younger Emausaurus from northern Germany, but that specimen really needs redescription, especially in light of everything that's been learned about Scelidosaurus and both ankylosaur and stegosaur evolution and diversity since it was first described! Scelidosaurus is still, I believe, the earliest quadrupedal ornithischian known, indicating that ornithischians were beginning to bulk up even in the earliest Jurassic, possibly as a function of competition with herbivorous saurischians (sauropodomorphs) that had been big since the Late Triassic, and possibly also as a function of reduced competition as a result of the extinction of many of the other big herbivores of the Late Triassic (dicynodonts, aetosaurs, rhynchosaurs, etc.)
I'll also say that there are some workers out there that suspect that Scelidosaurus may be much closer to ankylosaurs than stegosaurs -- if that's correct, that pushes the eurypodan (stegosaurs + ankylosaurs) split much farther back in time than has been generally perceived. That would mean that there are a lot more early thyreophorans, and eurypodans, out there that have yet to be discovered -- that's exciting not only because thyreophorans are just plain awesome but also because they're rather understudied as a group, particularly this far down the cladogram! And I say this having been primarily a saurischian worker for most of my career!
[RKHF]: Can you give us any sneak peak on future exhibit plans for the museum?
[JH]: Well, come May, when the Dabney Scelidosaurus replica migrates to its permanent spot in the museum, our temporary exhibit space will be filled with another exhibit that we will make ourselves that we think will be unique in the annals of natural history exhibitions. We're calling it "Prehistorigami," and it will feature origami models of various prehistoric animals (lots of, but not exclusively, dinosaurs). The purpose will be to educate visitors about both origami as a very unusual art form with strong roots in science as well as about a variety of prehistoric animals. That exhibit will be up through the summer. In September, we'll install another exhibit (in time for SVP visitors!), though the subject of that is currently under discussion, so I can't provide more detail yet...!
I'd like to say one more thing, although you didn't ask a question specifically on this subject: the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm is deeply honored by the donation by Virginius "Jinks" and Barbara Anne Dabney, and they fully deserve all the credit for making this exhibit happen! The donation story itself is a nice exemplar of serendipity. I've been researching the possibilities of our museum obtaining replicas for a long time, something for which we could do targeted fund-raising. Given the fossils we have, replicas of, say, Dilophosaurus and Megapnosaurus would be ideal and beautifully complement our most abundant fossils, but they simply don't exist. Megapnosaurus (particularly "M." kayentakatae) hasn't ever really been molded, and what few Dilophosaurus replicas exist out there were made from molds that have long-since disintegrated. The fossils of both taxa really are too fragile to mold and de-mold safely, so it will be a long time before we can get those. So I've been looking for other things. I've known about this particular specimen of Scelidosaurus for a while, and even saw the original in Bristol during the SVP meeting there. But poking around on-line I saw a replica of it on display at the Charmouth Heritage Center. So I contacted them and asked them where they got it; they pointed me to the owner of the specimen, Mr. David Sole, and were kind enough to give me his contact information. So I contacted him; he's an incredibly nice and generous guy! He said he still had one replica available and told us what it would cost. That just happened to be the day on which our last temporary exhibit, "Dino-right, Dino-wrong," opened. So I took the information to the opening to chat about with other members of our Board, who were very excited about it. The exhibit was opened with a ribbon-cutting by the Dixie Sunshiners, and Jinks was one of them. Wandering through the exhibit after the opening ceremony, he overheard some of our Board members talking about how to proceed with the fund-raising to buy it, and mentioned that he'd like to get in on it. When pressed, he basically said he'd like to buy the whole kit 'n' kaboodle for the museum. I was literally stunned into silence by this news (anyone that knows me even a little will be surprised to hear that!)...and moved by the generosity. And as an aside, it's the easiest freakin' fund-raising I've ever done, and I say this as the kid that, when he had to sell band candy back in junior high, wasn't ever able to sell anything except the ones I ate myself!
So while I know that the dinosaur community will be heavily focused on the replica itself, I want to make sure that everyone knows that the real story here isn't the replica, but Jinks Dabney and the donation of the specimen -- all the credit goes to him and Barbara Anne!
Thanks to Jerry for taking the time to answer my questions and for alerting me to their new exhibit! I am looking forward to see it and their origami exhibit! Below is an article on the donation that was recently published in the Salt Lake Tribune. All museums should be so lucky to have such great patrons as the Dabney's! If you have not had a chance to see the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm in Saint George yet I highly recommended it. It is a very nice museum and I have to give kudos to Andrew Milner also for all of the hard work he has done there, along with his volunteers and staff [here is a link to a post I wrote about the museum in 2009]. The museum is worth the visit, so be sure to stop the next time you are in Utah!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dinosaur replica donated to St. George museum
By Mark Havnes
The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: February 4, 2011 09:42PM
Updated: February 5, 2011 12:35AM
A St. George lawyer says his nine grandchildren, who love dinosaurs, compelled him to pay for a replica of a 195-million-year-old scelidosaurus to go on permanent display at the Discovery Track Site Museum in this southwestern Utah city.
 |
| St. George resident Virginius Dabney looks at the replica skeleton of a Scelidosaurus dinosaur he purchased from a museum in England. It will go on display at the Discovery Track Site Museum in St. George. Image by Mark Havnes | The Salt Lake Tribune |
“We were in the right place at the right time to get this little sucker,” said Virginius Dabney, who contributed most of the $7,000 it cost to bring the replicated skeleton of the plant-munching beast to St. George. “Now the grandchildren can see grandpa’s dinosaur.”
The public will get an opportunity to see the skeleton Wednesday.
The model of the scelidosaurus (skel-eye-doh-SAWR-us) is based on one on display in the Charmouth Heritage Center in southern England near where the species was first discovered in 1859.
Jerry Harris, director of paleontology at Dixie State College in St. George, said that the replica will be the first one of the species on display in the Western Hemisphere.
He said the scelidosaurus roamed southwestern England during the early Jurassic period. The armor-plated dinosaur was 11 feet long and about 4 feet high, weighed three-quarters of a ton, and ate vegetation it ground with child-sized teeth.
“The replica is based on the most complete fossil [of scelidosaurus] ever found,” said Harris.
The St. George museum is built on the site of a prehistoric shoreline where dinosaurs roamed during the early Jurassic period. In 2000, a St. George doctor discovered dinosaur tracks when he turned over a slab of earth. Those tracks are on display at the Discovery museum.
Harris said that, in addition to tracks, only a few bone scraps have been found at the St. George site. But that doesn’t rule out skeletons.
“We just haven’t found them yet,” he said.
Rusty Salmon, director of the St. George museum, said the scelidosaurus replica will be the first skeleton to be displayed at the museum and she hopes there will be others in the future.
“Kids love to see dinosaurs on display, so the more the better,” she said.
Dabney said he has always had a soft spot for dinosaurs. “This is like buying a piece of history.”
His wife, Barbara Dabney, said she was a little surprised when she heard of her husband’s investment in prehistory.
“I was a little shocked at first, but once that wore off, I’m very supportive,” she said.
Original text © ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster, Photo of exhibit © Jerry Harris unless otherwise stated. Article © Salt Lake Tribune
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Dinosaur Wars: The Beauty of the Big Game Hunt in Deep Time
This week the PBS’s series “American Experience” is profiling the infamous paleontologists O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope. These two men are probably the two most famous paleontologists in history. Unfortunately, they are just as well known for their long running fossil feud as they are for their contributions to paleontology.
The documentary is filled with wonderful historical photos, including one of a young Marsh that I had not seen before, along with excerpts from their letters to and from colleagues and family. Interviews with paleontologists Peter Dodson, Bob Bakker, Jacques Gauthier, and Tim Rowe, along with historian Steven Conn and writer Mark Jaffe help to flesh out scenes. One of the most interesting aspects of the show is the perspective on the respective approaches to the science taken by the two antangonists – Cope’s traditionally scientific and Marsh’s Machiavellian and old-school business. One valued progress, the other success and domination at all costs. Not that Marsh didn’t strive for scientific contributions and make them, but the goal of owning the field seemed to drive him.
The episode was very well done. I encourage everyone to tune in tomorrow night (Monday, January 17, 2011) and watch. Below is my summary of the episode.
The episode begins in 1868, introducing us to the two men. Marsh, a professor of paleontology at Yale, took a train trip out west. He observed all of the wide open terrain and exposed rocks and while he collected little, he did catch the fossil collecting bug. His position at Yale was funded by his millionaire uncle, George Peabody. As he was not paid a salary by the university itself, he did not have to answer to anyone. This gave him the freedom to define his position within the university and his science.
Also in 1868, Hadrosaurus foulki went on display at Philadelphia Academy of Science. The skeleton had been assembled by a group of scientists including a 28 year old Edward D. Cope. He had already made a name for himself with the discovery of the second known American dinosaur skeleton, Laelaps. Self taught, he gained admission to the Academy at a young age to study the material. In the fall of 1868 Marsh asked Cope to show him the Hadrosaurus quarry. After his tour, Marsh made a deal with the quarry owners to send any new fossils to him at Yale. This obviously upset Cope, who before hand had been receiving the fossils.
The feud between the two men was fully ignited when Cope reconstructed the skeleton of Elasmosaurus with the skull placed on the tail rather than the neck. Cope later noticed his mistake and tried to retract the publication before it was released, but unfortunately it was too late. Marsh pointed out his mistake right away.
In 1870 Marsh embarked on the first fossil prospecting trip to the western frontier. This well publicized trip had a budget of $15,000 and was guided by Buffalo Bill. Cope was keeping up with the press on Marsh’s expedition, but had no budget to set off on his own fossil collecting trip. He wrote to geologist Ferdinand Hayden who had been mapping out west for the government. Hayden wrote back and offered to fund a fossil collecting trip for Cope in 1872, if he could meet them in Ft. Bridger, Wyoming, where Marsh had been collecting fossil mammals the year before. Unfortunately, when Cope arrived in Wyoming Haden had already departed the fort. Cope was able to recruit men to accompany him to the badlands to collect, all the while being followed by Marsh’s “spies.” When Marsh heard what Cope was doing, he headed west. Little did they both known at the time, Joseph Leidy was also headed west to collect fossils in the same area. Soon the field was becoming more crowded than Cope and Marsh liked. All three men were finding the remains of a large mammal with huge tusks. Cope wrote up his findings and dashed them off by telegraph from Wyoming, in hopes to be the first to publish the findings. Marsh did the same. However, Leidy beat them both, naming the species Uintatherium robustum. Cope and Marsh continued over the years to ignore the work of each other and Leidy, naming the same species different names and rushing short papers to press. In a great quote from Bakker in this segment, the enthusiastic assignment of unique names to multiple specimens of what in reality was a single species of uintathere was equated to “…taxonomic carpet-bombing.”
The winter and spring following the 1872 field season started a campaign by Marsh to discredit Cope, a process that started off scientific and becoming personal. Colleagues were appalled, so much so that Leidy got disgusted by it all and walked away from paleontology, leaving Marsh and Cope to fight it out. The rivals see the field of paleontology as wide open, and instead of working together or carving it up they look for ways to cut each other out.
Marsh was very secretive, keeping his collections off limits to most scientists, with the noted exception of Thomas Huxley. Marsh showed Huxley his collection of horse fossils (33 different species in 3 families), along with a prehistoric bird fossil with teeth, astonishing Huxley. Darwin later wrote Marsh a letter proclaiming his horse collection “…the best support to the theory of evolution which has appeared in the last 20 years…” (August 30, 1880).
After the death of his father, Cope was left a large inheritance he could use to fund his own fossil expeditions. In 1876, he set out for Montana, just weeks after Custer’s resounding defeat at Little Big Horn. These trips were very successful, and he was able to produce many publications from his numerous discoveries. His many letters home shed light on his home life and on his field fossil exploits, and many of these letters are highlighted throughout the episode.
By the spring of 1877 Cope and Marsh were barely communicating. In the foothills above Morrison, Colorado, a local artist and high school teacher named Arthur Lakes discovered large bones in the Late Jurassic river sediments of the area. He wrote to Marsh and Cope about his finds, shipping a few bones to each. Marsh immediately put Lakes on the payroll, but was upset to discover that Cope had already hired another high school teacher to work in a similar area to the south (Garden Park, Colorado).
Around this same time Marsh received word on another location, at Como Bluff, Wyoming, from two railroad workers. Cope and Mash had passed this location many times on the railroad. Marsh tried to quickly claim the area, but Cope had also heard about the location and soon opened quarries (hiring, in fact, one of Marsh’s original railworkers out from under him). Determined to keep his men ahead of Cope, Marsh had his men work through the winter in Wyoming at 7000 feet elevation. It was brutal work, and Lakes’s journal documents plenty of frozen toes and fingers and subzero temperatures and blowing snow while they were trying to work their quarries. As Peter Dodson points out “Working in the winter just seems utter madness. Paleontologists, with rare exception, do not subject themselves to this sort of abuse anymore.”
During this time the two men’s teams discovered hundreds of dinosaur specimens. Ever secretive, Marsh would exchange coded telegrams with spies about Cope, and sadly he would even order his men to destroy fossils so that Cope could not collect them. (This latter offense, however, was rare, generally only occurring in the winter slow season when Marsh’s crews were often down to one man working alone and trying to work and guard multiple sites. In fairness to Marsh, in at least one case this action was taken by his field man of his own initiative and was not directly ordered by the Yale professor.) In a revealing insight to the depth of Marsh’s frustration with Cope, he is said to have occasionally been overheard exclaiming “God dammit! I wish the Lord would take him!!” Presumably this would have been heard by his staff, and one can imagine the exchange of glances between lab assistants on hearing such words being bellowed at great volume from the boss’s office!
In November of 1878 O.C. Marsh, who was now president of the National Academy of Science, joined forces with John Wesley Powell. In 1881, the US Geological Survey was formed and headed by Powell, who then appointed Marsh head paleontologist. With unlimited funding, 50 employees, and a salary, Marsh now thought he could finally get rid of Cope.
Without government sponsorship, and his inheritance dwindling, Cope invested in a mining corporation that unfortunately went bust. He applied for jobs with no success. By 1889 he was separated from his wife and living in a small apartment.
Years earlier Marsh had inserted language in the USGS charter stating that any fossils collected with government funds had to be turned over to the Smithsonian Institution. Marsh had made a deal with Powell to keep his own specimens at Yale. Fortunately for Cope, he was a good record keeper. He was able to show how he had spent his own money and the money of the government and was able to keep his own fossils, which formed the bulk of his collection. Upset by this audit, Cope went after Mash. He had been documenting Marsh’s actions over the years and turned his notes over to a journalist who wrote a story in the New York Herald. Cope accused Marsh of incompetence, ignorance, and plagiarism, with headlines reading “Men of Science Agog.” Cope also accused Powell of corruption and misuses of government funds at the USGS. Marsh and Powell fought back calling Cope a liar and a thief. Headlines read “Professor Cope and Director Powell still engaged in the pleasant pastime of damaging each other’s scientific reputation. ‘Give and Take’ seems the rule.”
This went on for 3 weeks, and left Marsh in a bad position. All of the bad press caught the eye of politicians. They viewed science as a waste of taxpayer money, with Alabama senator Hillary Herbert leading the attack. The USGS budget was ultimately cut in half and the department of paleontology was eliminated. Powell sent Marsh a telegram simply stating “Appropriation out off. Please send your resignation at once.” Marsh lost all of his funding and staff. He had to mortgage his house and ask for a salary from Yale. And then the Smithsonian contacted Marsh and asked for all fossils collected with government money to be turned over. Marsh had not kept up with his accounting and did not know which fossils were collected with private funds and which with government money. As Tim Rowe points out, Marsh had set a trap for Cope and instead had ensnared himself. In the end over 80 tons of fossils were sent to Washington D.C.
By 1897 Cope had kidney disease and was very sick. He was contacted by a young artist named Charles Knight who asked for help in reconstructing his discoveries, which Cope did for two weeks. A few days after finishing the work Cope was found dead in his room. He was only 56. During his life he had collected over 1300 specimens. The resulting artwork of Knight’s was the most dynamic reconstruction of past vertebrate life made up to that time.
In February of 1899 Marsh was returning from a trip to the Smithsonian and walked home from the train station in a cold rain, contracting pneumonia. He died a few weeks later with only $186 left in his bank account (1899 dollars). He was 68 years old. He left behind a huge fossil collection, with some of the best evidence of evolution.
The show covers the first round in the exploration of the large dinosaur fossils of the West. Around the time Cope and Marsh had exhausted their respective resources and energies pummeling each other, the large museums of the country began a more friendly but no less competitive race to mount skeletons of these dinosaurs in their exhibits [Read Paul Brinkman’s “The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush” for the rest of this story]. This is also a story involving clashing personalities and egos and big budgets, but it is perhaps a story for another episode.
Thanks to PBS for the opportunity to review this episode from American Experience! © ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
The documentary is filled with wonderful historical photos, including one of a young Marsh that I had not seen before, along with excerpts from their letters to and from colleagues and family. Interviews with paleontologists Peter Dodson, Bob Bakker, Jacques Gauthier, and Tim Rowe, along with historian Steven Conn and writer Mark Jaffe help to flesh out scenes. One of the most interesting aspects of the show is the perspective on the respective approaches to the science taken by the two antangonists – Cope’s traditionally scientific and Marsh’s Machiavellian and old-school business. One valued progress, the other success and domination at all costs. Not that Marsh didn’t strive for scientific contributions and make them, but the goal of owning the field seemed to drive him.
The episode was very well done. I encourage everyone to tune in tomorrow night (Monday, January 17, 2011) and watch. Below is my summary of the episode.
The episode begins in 1868, introducing us to the two men. Marsh, a professor of paleontology at Yale, took a train trip out west. He observed all of the wide open terrain and exposed rocks and while he collected little, he did catch the fossil collecting bug. His position at Yale was funded by his millionaire uncle, George Peabody. As he was not paid a salary by the university itself, he did not have to answer to anyone. This gave him the freedom to define his position within the university and his science.
Also in 1868, Hadrosaurus foulki went on display at Philadelphia Academy of Science. The skeleton had been assembled by a group of scientists including a 28 year old Edward D. Cope. He had already made a name for himself with the discovery of the second known American dinosaur skeleton, Laelaps. Self taught, he gained admission to the Academy at a young age to study the material. In the fall of 1868 Marsh asked Cope to show him the Hadrosaurus quarry. After his tour, Marsh made a deal with the quarry owners to send any new fossils to him at Yale. This obviously upset Cope, who before hand had been receiving the fossils.
The feud between the two men was fully ignited when Cope reconstructed the skeleton of Elasmosaurus with the skull placed on the tail rather than the neck. Cope later noticed his mistake and tried to retract the publication before it was released, but unfortunately it was too late. Marsh pointed out his mistake right away.
In 1870 Marsh embarked on the first fossil prospecting trip to the western frontier. This well publicized trip had a budget of $15,000 and was guided by Buffalo Bill. Cope was keeping up with the press on Marsh’s expedition, but had no budget to set off on his own fossil collecting trip. He wrote to geologist Ferdinand Hayden who had been mapping out west for the government. Hayden wrote back and offered to fund a fossil collecting trip for Cope in 1872, if he could meet them in Ft. Bridger, Wyoming, where Marsh had been collecting fossil mammals the year before. Unfortunately, when Cope arrived in Wyoming Haden had already departed the fort. Cope was able to recruit men to accompany him to the badlands to collect, all the while being followed by Marsh’s “spies.” When Marsh heard what Cope was doing, he headed west. Little did they both known at the time, Joseph Leidy was also headed west to collect fossils in the same area. Soon the field was becoming more crowded than Cope and Marsh liked. All three men were finding the remains of a large mammal with huge tusks. Cope wrote up his findings and dashed them off by telegraph from Wyoming, in hopes to be the first to publish the findings. Marsh did the same. However, Leidy beat them both, naming the species Uintatherium robustum. Cope and Marsh continued over the years to ignore the work of each other and Leidy, naming the same species different names and rushing short papers to press. In a great quote from Bakker in this segment, the enthusiastic assignment of unique names to multiple specimens of what in reality was a single species of uintathere was equated to “…taxonomic carpet-bombing.”
The winter and spring following the 1872 field season started a campaign by Marsh to discredit Cope, a process that started off scientific and becoming personal. Colleagues were appalled, so much so that Leidy got disgusted by it all and walked away from paleontology, leaving Marsh and Cope to fight it out. The rivals see the field of paleontology as wide open, and instead of working together or carving it up they look for ways to cut each other out.
Marsh was very secretive, keeping his collections off limits to most scientists, with the noted exception of Thomas Huxley. Marsh showed Huxley his collection of horse fossils (33 different species in 3 families), along with a prehistoric bird fossil with teeth, astonishing Huxley. Darwin later wrote Marsh a letter proclaiming his horse collection “…the best support to the theory of evolution which has appeared in the last 20 years…” (August 30, 1880).
After the death of his father, Cope was left a large inheritance he could use to fund his own fossil expeditions. In 1876, he set out for Montana, just weeks after Custer’s resounding defeat at Little Big Horn. These trips were very successful, and he was able to produce many publications from his numerous discoveries. His many letters home shed light on his home life and on his field fossil exploits, and many of these letters are highlighted throughout the episode.
By the spring of 1877 Cope and Marsh were barely communicating. In the foothills above Morrison, Colorado, a local artist and high school teacher named Arthur Lakes discovered large bones in the Late Jurassic river sediments of the area. He wrote to Marsh and Cope about his finds, shipping a few bones to each. Marsh immediately put Lakes on the payroll, but was upset to discover that Cope had already hired another high school teacher to work in a similar area to the south (Garden Park, Colorado).
Around this same time Marsh received word on another location, at Como Bluff, Wyoming, from two railroad workers. Cope and Mash had passed this location many times on the railroad. Marsh tried to quickly claim the area, but Cope had also heard about the location and soon opened quarries (hiring, in fact, one of Marsh’s original railworkers out from under him). Determined to keep his men ahead of Cope, Marsh had his men work through the winter in Wyoming at 7000 feet elevation. It was brutal work, and Lakes’s journal documents plenty of frozen toes and fingers and subzero temperatures and blowing snow while they were trying to work their quarries. As Peter Dodson points out “Working in the winter just seems utter madness. Paleontologists, with rare exception, do not subject themselves to this sort of abuse anymore.”
During this time the two men’s teams discovered hundreds of dinosaur specimens. Ever secretive, Marsh would exchange coded telegrams with spies about Cope, and sadly he would even order his men to destroy fossils so that Cope could not collect them. (This latter offense, however, was rare, generally only occurring in the winter slow season when Marsh’s crews were often down to one man working alone and trying to work and guard multiple sites. In fairness to Marsh, in at least one case this action was taken by his field man of his own initiative and was not directly ordered by the Yale professor.) In a revealing insight to the depth of Marsh’s frustration with Cope, he is said to have occasionally been overheard exclaiming “God dammit! I wish the Lord would take him!!” Presumably this would have been heard by his staff, and one can imagine the exchange of glances between lab assistants on hearing such words being bellowed at great volume from the boss’s office!
In November of 1878 O.C. Marsh, who was now president of the National Academy of Science, joined forces with John Wesley Powell. In 1881, the US Geological Survey was formed and headed by Powell, who then appointed Marsh head paleontologist. With unlimited funding, 50 employees, and a salary, Marsh now thought he could finally get rid of Cope.
Without government sponsorship, and his inheritance dwindling, Cope invested in a mining corporation that unfortunately went bust. He applied for jobs with no success. By 1889 he was separated from his wife and living in a small apartment.
Years earlier Marsh had inserted language in the USGS charter stating that any fossils collected with government funds had to be turned over to the Smithsonian Institution. Marsh had made a deal with Powell to keep his own specimens at Yale. Fortunately for Cope, he was a good record keeper. He was able to show how he had spent his own money and the money of the government and was able to keep his own fossils, which formed the bulk of his collection. Upset by this audit, Cope went after Mash. He had been documenting Marsh’s actions over the years and turned his notes over to a journalist who wrote a story in the New York Herald. Cope accused Marsh of incompetence, ignorance, and plagiarism, with headlines reading “Men of Science Agog.” Cope also accused Powell of corruption and misuses of government funds at the USGS. Marsh and Powell fought back calling Cope a liar and a thief. Headlines read “Professor Cope and Director Powell still engaged in the pleasant pastime of damaging each other’s scientific reputation. ‘Give and Take’ seems the rule.”
This went on for 3 weeks, and left Marsh in a bad position. All of the bad press caught the eye of politicians. They viewed science as a waste of taxpayer money, with Alabama senator Hillary Herbert leading the attack. The USGS budget was ultimately cut in half and the department of paleontology was eliminated. Powell sent Marsh a telegram simply stating “Appropriation out off. Please send your resignation at once.” Marsh lost all of his funding and staff. He had to mortgage his house and ask for a salary from Yale. And then the Smithsonian contacted Marsh and asked for all fossils collected with government money to be turned over. Marsh had not kept up with his accounting and did not know which fossils were collected with private funds and which with government money. As Tim Rowe points out, Marsh had set a trap for Cope and instead had ensnared himself. In the end over 80 tons of fossils were sent to Washington D.C.
By 1897 Cope had kidney disease and was very sick. He was contacted by a young artist named Charles Knight who asked for help in reconstructing his discoveries, which Cope did for two weeks. A few days after finishing the work Cope was found dead in his room. He was only 56. During his life he had collected over 1300 specimens. The resulting artwork of Knight’s was the most dynamic reconstruction of past vertebrate life made up to that time.
In February of 1899 Marsh was returning from a trip to the Smithsonian and walked home from the train station in a cold rain, contracting pneumonia. He died a few weeks later with only $186 left in his bank account (1899 dollars). He was 68 years old. He left behind a huge fossil collection, with some of the best evidence of evolution.
The show covers the first round in the exploration of the large dinosaur fossils of the West. Around the time Cope and Marsh had exhausted their respective resources and energies pummeling each other, the large museums of the country began a more friendly but no less competitive race to mount skeletons of these dinosaurs in their exhibits [Read Paul Brinkman’s “The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush” for the rest of this story]. This is also a story involving clashing personalities and egos and big budgets, but it is perhaps a story for another episode.
Thanks to PBS for the opportunity to review this episode from American Experience! © ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Nerdasaurus-Rex
If you have $10 hurry on over to Shirt.Woot and grab yourself this geeky T! Its only good for one day, and you still have a few hours left!
Friday, January 7, 2011
Hevisaurus
Upon first watching this I had a very distinct moment that could only be described as "WTF?!" I do not know Finnish. I am not even sure I knew it was Finnish at the time. Come to find out this band, called Hevisaurus, is a Finnish metal band that writes children's songs. Our friend Pete sent this to us, no idea how he found it. So I, like a good lemming, post it on my facebook page, which starts a most interesting conversation with a tall, pale friend of Norwegian decent. He points out to me that this is a song written about the last mammoth. They are singing him into his final sleep.
Thanks to Pete and EBG!!
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
"Brushing his long hair
Blowing his trunk as well
He cleans his tusks
On top of the cold permafrost
He lays down his great and mighty head
And straightens his tail
The wind blows
All land covered in snow
He falls asleep under the tree
Good night, the last mammoth
It's time to go to sleep
Good night, the last mammoth
You will be remembered"
Wow.Thanks to Pete and EBG!!
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
Thursday, January 6, 2011
SVP prep calendars available online
Just a note to remind everyone that the SVP prep calendars are now available online!! They are only $20 (+ shipping) and all of the funds go into the pot for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Preparator's Grant! Its a great cause and a cool calendar to have hanging around your lab, office, or home. We had one in our lab last year and it was so popular that I ordered a new one for our lab today!
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
4th Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium & 9th Conference on Fossil Resources
Abstracts are due this Monday (January 10, 2011) for the 9th Conference on Fossil Resources and the 4th Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium! Check out the details below:
9th Conference on Fossil Resources Registration form link
4th Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium Registration Form Link
For more information on the 9th Conference on Fossil Resources visit the official site.
For more information on the 4th Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium visit fossilprep.org.
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
Preliminary Schedule :
9th Conference on Fossil Resources Registration form link
4th Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium Registration Form Link
Held at the South Lincoln Training and Events Center in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
Suggestions for session topics are welcome. Please e-mail suggested topics to Arvid Aase by October 31, 2010.
Registration for each conference is $100. Attend both conferences for $160, a $40 savings (no coupon necessary).
Motel rooms will be scarce during spring of 2011 due to industrial projects in the Kemmerer area! Roommates are encouraged so enough rooms are available for all who want to attend. (Evanston is the next closest town at 45 miles away) Make reservations now!! Only 24 rooms remain in the host hotel as of Sept. 7, 2010 (April in Kemmerer = very cold camping)
Host motel is Best Western Fossil Country Inn Mention 'Fossil Conference' to receive $70 room rate. The block of 50 rooms will be held until February 26, 2010. 307-877-3388
Other motels are:
Antler Motel
307-877-4461
Energy Inn
307-877-6901
Fairview Motel
307-877-3938
Fossil Butte Motel
307-877-3996
Frontier Suites
307-877-3377
Contact Arvid for more information:
Fossil Butte National Monument
PO Box 592
864 Chicken Creek Road
Kemmerer, WY 83101
ph 307/877-4455
For more information on the 9th Conference on Fossil Resources visit the official site.
For more information on the 4th Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium visit fossilprep.org.
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)