Dinosaurs Dinosaurs Book

[Saraid Madnick]

Discoverthe art and science on display in Dinosaurs in Motion, including sketching, metalworking, biomechanics, kinetics, and the robotics that breathe life into these sculptures. Explore how your favorite dinosaurs lived and moved, including Ouranosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Diplodocus and many more. Get hands-on with innovation and have fun with this fascinating mix of engineering and sculpture.

Have you ever wondered how paleontologists know what they know about dinosaurs? How do they know what dinosaurs looked like, what colors they displayed, or how their muscles moved? How do they obtain all that information from a jumble of rocks and bones? The Dueling Dinosaurs exhibit will answer all those questions and more.

Like our paleontologists, you will practice extracting information from fossil evidence to build a picture of the ancient past. You will design your own dinosaur by comparing it to living animals. You will see, touch, and even smell the process of paleontology as it happens in the lab. You will use CT scan data to figure out what sounds a dinosaur could hear. You will touch and feel fossils of all shapes and sizes.

Demand is high and space is limited. A FREE, timed-entry ticket is required for all guests, regardless of age. Your ticket provides you access at a specific date and time, ensuring you have the time and space to fully enjoy the Dueling Dinosaurs experience. Reserve your FREE tickets.

The exhibit is located on the first floor of the Nature Research Center at 121 West Jones Street. When you arrive, proceed directly to the entrance with your tickets at your designated time. If you arrive late, we will do our best to accommodate you, but cannot guarantee there will be space for you in the exhibit.Last entry is at 4pm.

All ages are welcome within the exhibit, which contains engaging sights, sounds, touchable objects, and more. The scientific content provided is best suited for middle schoolers and older. Strollers are not advised.

The Dueling Dinosaurs experience includes a fully functional paleontology research lab. Loud sounds, including drilling and sawing, will be heard periodically. Noise-cancelling headphones are available to check out for free at the Information Desk and at the exhibit entrance.

Google Maps knew exactly where to go when we typed in Bamahenge. Here are some directions anyway: Follow US-98 east for about 3 miles past Elberta. Turn right onto Rt 95 (Rt then turn right onto Fish Trap Rd.) At the sign for Barber Marina turn left onto Barber Pkwy. Follow the parkway until you see a small gravel parking lot.

As Bamahenge is fiberglass, and not an actual druid monolith you are free to run all around. The kids happily ran in and out of the structure. There was no one around to disturb, so it is not far fetched to think this may have been more fun for them than visiting the real thing.

I wanted to make sure the kids understood what they were seeing, other than just cool fiberglass art. This video from FreeSchool on YouTube does a good job explaining the structure. Also, check out the book If Stones Could Speak, by Marc Aronson.

If you want to check out the dinosaurs, hop back in your car and drive down the road a bit farther toward the marina. There is no parking lot for the dinosaurs so you just have to keep your eyes open for a clearing. (There is parking by the third dinosaur which is roadside, so you can also park here and walk back to see the others.)

The T. Rex is tucked back into a little clearing, so you have to be brave enough to walk up to his feet. The Little Little was terrified of this guy, but the Big and Middle thought it was hysterical. They pretended to be trying to wave the big dinosaur down.

When we got home we entered a few dates from this trip into our Book of Centuries. (A Book of Centuries is a blank timeline of the world. You enter the important dates. It is a great way to draw connections as you visit places and read books. I recommend it for everyone, not just homeschoolers!)

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One of two halls in the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing, the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs features fossils from one of the two major groups of dinosaurs. The ornithischians are characterized by a backward-pointing extension of the pubis bone, which is thought to have helped to support the enormous stomachs that these dinosaurs needed to digest the masses of tough vegetation they ate.

Within the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs, exhibits explore two evolutionary branches within this group: the genasaurs, which are defined by the development of inset tooth rows that form cheeks, and the cerapods, identified by an uneven covering of tooth enamel. These traits may have made holding and chewing food easier.

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An artist's impression of what an asteroid colliding with Earth might look like. Sixty-six million years ago an event like this, although on a much smaller scale, caused 75% of all animals to die out. Image: Don Davis Via NASA Image and Video Library

In 1980, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Walter Alvarez and his geologist son Walter published a theory that a historic layer of iridium-rich clay was caused by a large asteroid colliding with Earth.

Luis Walter Alvarez (left) and his son Walter (right) are known for their theory that an asteroid collided with our planet 66 million years ago and caused all non-bird dinosaurs and many other animals to die out. Image: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory/ Wikimedia Commons

Paul says, 'An asteroid impact is supported by really good evidence because we've identified the crater. It's now largely buried on the seafloor off the coast of Mexico. It is exactly the same age as the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs, which can be tracked in the rock record all around the world.'

The asteroid is thought to have been between 10 and 15 kilometres wide, but the velocity of its collision caused the creation of a much larger crater, 150 kilometres in diameter. It's the second-largest crater on the planet.

Iridium is one of the rarest metals found on Earth. It is usually associated with extraterrestrial impacts, as the element occurs more abundantly in meteorites. Hi-Res Images of Chemical Elements/ Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

The dinosaur-killing crash threw huge amounts of debris into the air and caused massive tidal waves to wash over parts of the American continents. There is also evidence of substantial fires from that point in history.

Paul explains, 'The asteroid hit at high velocity and effectively vaporised. It made a huge crater, so in the immediate area there was total devastation. A huge blast wave and heatwave went out and it threw vast amounts of material up into the atmosphere.

Like dominos, this trailed up the food chain, causing the ecosystem to collapse. The reduction in plant life had a huge impact on herbivores' ability to survive, which in turn meant that carnivores would also have suffered from having less food available.

'There is a lot of discussion over the actual kill mechanism and how long that period lasted. There are still a lot of unknowns. But it was a massive event affecting all life on Earth, from microorganisms all the way through to dinosaurs,' says Paul.

In what is now central India, there was substantial volcanic activity that, although unrelated to the asteroid impact, was causing problems of its own. The resulting lava outcrop is now known as the Deccan Traps.

'There were also longer-term changes. The continents were drifting around and splitting apart from each other, creating bigger oceans, which changed ocean and atmosphere patterns around the world. This also had a strong effect on climate and vegetation.'

During the Cretaceous extinction event, plants were less affected than animals because their seeds and pollen can survive harsh periods for longer. After the dinosaurs' extinction, flowering plants dominated Earth, continuing a process that had started in the Cretaceous, and continue to do so today. But all land animals weighing over 25 kilogrammes died out.

'What we're left with are basically the seeds of what we have today. Many of the major animal groups that are alive today were in place before the asteroid impact and they all suffered some level of extinction - but the lines that led to modern animals got through,' says Paul.

'It was only around 15 million years after the non-bird dinosaurs disappear, during what's termed the Oligocene Epoch, that we started to get really big mammals. This is when rhino-sized animals start to reappear. But up until that point it's a world filled with small animals, especially in comparison with the dinosaurs that came before them. It took a while for body size to catch up.'

There is research to suggest that if the impact had occurred elsewhere on the planet, the fate of life on Earth could have been very different. If it had fallen just minutes later the asteroid would have landed in deeper water, causing less rock to vaporise and rise to block out the Sun's light and warmth. This would have lowered the chances of a mass extinction.

'I suspect some of them would still be around. We don't know a lot about the last 10 million years of their reign and what we do know is based on only one area in the world, western North America. There is a really good record of those classic last non-bird dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops.

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