This Way to the Dinosaurs

Welcome to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science! The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting's welcome reception was held here last week. This museum is trying out some interesting and different exhibition ideas that I haven't seen too often elsewhere, so let's take a look at some highlights. One of the most interesting design elements is the visible escalators poking out the side of the building. Back in 2013 at the Korea-Mongolia International Dinosaur Project Symposium, Tony Fiorillo gave a really interesting presentation on the design of this museum, and talked about how a lot of people never make it off the first floor of a museum, which is also usually where the dinosaurs are. So at the Perot Museum, the dinosaurs are on the top floor and you are immediately shuttled upstairs (it's actually kind of hard to *not* go to the top floor first!), and then you work your way down the museum to exit. 

The dinosaur exhibits feature some interesting species that aren't found in a lot of other museums - here's a modern take on Tenontosaurus, and the still unnamed Proctor Lake 'hypsilophodontid' (somebody name that guy, already!).

My favourite exhibit in the whole museum! One of the only places where I've seen the North American-Asian faunal interchange visualized in an exhibit. Tarbosaurus is in Asia, and its close relatives are in North America (I can't remember exactly which taxon is featured here, but perhaps it is Bistahieversor based on its geographic position?). Also whoa, Beringia sure looks strange from this polar vantage point.

Another interesting thing the museum has done is to place modern animals alongside the dinosaurs for comparative purposes. Here we've got predators and prey - a mountain lion and a deer, and Tyrannosaurus and the sauropod Alamosaurus (off to the left of my photo).

A similar approach is taken in the Alaskan dinosaur corner - here's the herbivorous Edmontosaurus Ugruunaluk...

...and its extant analogue the caribou (Rangifer!). I wasn't totally sold on this approach, but I was intrigued by the mixture of extant and extinct, and of modern and ancient ecosystems, so maybe I just need to ruminate on it a little more.

I'm a sucker for Sinclair dinosaurs, what can I say.

Does the mould for the Ankylosaurus exist anywhere still??? DO WANT.

At one end of the dinosaur hall you take a set of stairs up to the bird exhibit! I liked this a lot, both because the bird exhibit had some cool interactive stuff, but also because I like the symbolism and narrative structure to traveling upwards towards birds from dinosaurs - it's like moving up the phylogenetic tree, and gaining flight.

From up in the rafters, you get a nice view of the dinosaur gallery, and a great vantage point for examining the gigantic Alamosaurus (real vertebrae are tucked down at ground level behind the skeleton from this angle). Alamosaurus is a weird and biogeographically interesting creature, representing a re-emergence of sauropods in North America after a lengthy hiatus throughout much of the mid Cretaceous. 

ELSEWHERE IN THE MUSEUM...

Rocks and minerals! With gigantic mineral shapes! (My favourite is the giant malachite clump in the back.)

Brains! There's a really fun section on medicine and human anatomy.

Phylogenies! Can you find where humans are located on this giant tree of life?

Outside the museum, we were bid farewell by these very fine green leapfrogs, which surely must be great fun to play with if you are smaller than I am.

More Texas adventures forthcoming - stay tuned!

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Wading With Dinosaurs

It's that time of year again! Time to talk palaeontology with a 1000 of my closest friends in a convention centre somewhere far, far away! That's right, it's the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, this time in Dallas, Texas. This year I tried out an SVP meeting field trip for the first time. We chased dinosaurs and their friends through the mid Cretaceous near Dallas!

First stop - Jones Ranch

While the morning was still cool, we ventured out to the Jones Ranch quarry, where the remains of several Sauroposeidon were excavated. Originally called Paluxysaurus, these bones belonged to several large sauropods from the Twin Mountains Formation, which is about 113 million years old or so. I was pretty impressed by the size of the quarry - I'm standing maybe 5 feet in front of one of the quarry walls, and looking towards the other.

Second stop - Dinosaur Valley State Park and the Paluxy River/Glen Rose trackways!

Dinosaur Valley State Park is one of those iconic dinosaur places that I'm sure is on many palaeontologist's bucket lists. If you've visited the American Museum of Natural History, you will probably have seen some of the trackways cut out of this very river - a piece of the tracksite was taken back to New York for display and hangs out underneath the Apatosaurus (Brontosaurus? Now I forget which specimens are which!). 

 The trackways are in the Albian aged Glen Rose Formation, and the rocks represent a lagoon or shallow marine environment. I guess dinosaurs liked the occasional day at the beach, as well! There are two kinds of trackmakers here, and here's one of them - a large theropod, probably something like Acrocanthosaurus.

And here's the other trackmaker, a large sauropod, possibly something like Sauroposeidon. In case that one is hard to make out, the hind foot print is about a foot to the left of that person's shoe, and is the large smooth depression with a series of vertical shadows at the front - those are the claw marks from a sauropod's hind foot. The front feet made totally different tracks, which look kind of like crescents or half-moons.

Intrepid field trip leader James Farlow heads into the river to sweep of a larger track surface. Most of the trackways are submerged, and you can see some of them in the foreground in this picture - look for the alternating big teardrop or circle shapes!

Most of us waded in and took turns sweeping slime out of the footprints and standing in them. 

The cool water felt pretty good on a hot Texas afternoon!

 

And this post wouldn't be complete without mentioning the great opportunity to see a different era of palaeontological history, in the form of original Sinclair World's Fair dinosaur statues!

Third stop - Arlington Archosaur Site

The Arlington Archosaur Site is a huge quarry in the Cenomanian Woodbine Formation that is located in an active housing development site - pretty soon, this will be part of some lucky people's backyards! It's a neat parallel to the Danek Bonebed in Edmonton, which is also located right within the city. Many volunteers have contributed thousands of hours to help excavate the remains of crocodilians, the early hadrosaur Protohadros, and more. This site has only been worked for a few years, so expect lots of discoveries and publications to come. Find some ankylosaurs, guys!

 The AAS volunteers had cold beverages and dinosaur trackway cookies waiting for us! Y'all are too nice. What a great way to end the day.

Many many thanks to the field trip leaders Chris Noto, Thomas Adams, and James Farlow for taking us on this romp through the mid Cretaceous - it was a great mix of classic sites and new discoveries, and a great start to the conference!

Meeting the Urvogel

Greetings from Deutschland! I've returned from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting in Berlin. Here's a couple of snapshots from the Museum fur Naturkunde, where the welcome reception was held last week. Giraffatitan (nee Brachiosaurus) brancai supervised the shenanigans in the main entrance hall.

The dinosaur gallery is dominated by animals from the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania, which was pretty neat. Most of us in North America are pretty familiar with the animals from the Morrison Formation, so it was neat to see some of their African doppelgangers, like Dysalotosaurus (American counterpart: Dryosaurus).

Elaphrosaurus, a ceratosaurian, was a new theropod for me.

And here's Kentrosaurus (American counterpart: Stegosaurus), with some excellent parascapular osteoderms. 

SVP is probably the only place where Archaeopteryx would have a lineup akin to someone meeting a rock star, but it IS a rock star in the palaeontological world.

It was pretty special to be able to see this famous fossil in the fossilized flesh. Archaeopteryx is sometimes called the Urvogel, or 'original bird' in German, and even though many new discoveries show that Archaeopteryx is not the only feathered dinosaur out there, it will always have an important place in the history of evolutionary study. 

Elsewhere in the museum, there were many fun treasures to be found, like this hippo skeleton.

The wet collections were spectacular and overwhelming.

Hey look, a Wall of Stuff! I love Walls of Stuff!

Walls of Stuff often reward close inspection. I learned about a new kind of large amphibian, the amphiuma! (The amphiuma's the one with the highly reduced legs; I've now forgotten what the other big salamander was!)

I was excited to see a quagga in the biodiversity gallery!

And a thylacine!!

This comparison of aquatically-adapted skeletons was a great way to show homologies and convergences in skeletons. One half of the body was a fleshed-out model, and the other was a skeleton (all were scaled to about the same length). In this photo you can see a sea turtle, seal or sea lion, dolphin, fish, and ichthyosaur, and there was also a penguin, hesperornithid, and plesiosaur in the case as well. 

That's all for Berlin for now, and I'm hoping to share some more information about Mongolian ankylsoaurs and some other exciting news in the next week or so! Until next time!

Back to Hwaseong

This week I've been in Hwaseong city, Korea for the HwaseongInternational Dinosaurs Expedition Symposium. I started this blog back in 2010 as a way to document my experiences working in the dino lab in Hwaseong, and so it was wonderful to be able to return more than three years later and see what's new. The symposium highlights research following the conclusion of the five-year Korea-Mongolia International Dinosaur Project. Many thanks to Dr. Yuong-Nam Lee, the city of Hwaseong, and all of the other organizers and staff who invited us to present our work at this excellent conference!

 

It was a special treat to see the new ankylosaur skeleton prepared and mounted in the lobby of our hotel! Watch out Tarbosaurus, you're about to get a face full of tail club.

Outside the main event room, the city had set up the winning entries from a local crafts contest themed around Koreaceratops. There were some awesome items on display!

It was also wonderful to eat real Korean food again! So tasty.

Hwaseong is home to dinosaur nesting sites as well as the holotype of Koreaceratops. There's a new observation tower on the hill above the reclaimed salt marsh which gives an excellent view of the area. The islands in the midground are Cretaceous egg-bearing rocks, but apparently the hill we're on in this photo, and the hills in the distances, are Precambrian basement.

Heading on out to see some of the nests!

The outside of the visitor centre has undergone a dramatic transformation, and now hosts a gigantic bas relief of Julius Csotonyi's Koreaceratops illustration.

Koreaceratops has also replaced the old Protoceratops model inside the centre. We also had a chance to check out some really special specimens collected during the expeditions that have now been prepared, but they are secret until published, so I can't share photos here! Needless to say, there are some wonderful papers coming down the pipeline resulting from these expeditions. On to the next adventure!

SVP Report 3: the Page Museum

For the final entry in this year's SVP recap, let's head over to the Page Museum, which showcases specimens collected right outside its front doors in the La Brea tar seeps.

So many specimens have been collected from the tar seeps that the museum has over 400 dire wolf skulls on display - out of more than 1500 in their collections! It makes for an impressive Wall of Stuff. I am envious of their actual non-negligible sample size!

A dire wolf skeleton with a baculum! Now there's something you don't see every day!

I love surprises in museums! I'm used to seeing Panthera atrox, the large cat skeleton in this photo, labeled as the American lion, but here it was called Naegele's giant jaguar! Turns out there's been some back-and-forth about whether or not Panthera atrox is more lion-like or more jaguar-like; recent research seems to put it in the lion lineage. Whether or not the cat is a lion or a jaguar has some interesting biogeographical implications! P. atrox is a relatively rare component of the La Brea deposits compared to dire wolves and sabercats.

Giant not-condor says hi! HI TERATORNIS!

I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, but man, ground sloth feet are weird.

In addition to all of the lovely large skeletal mounts, there's a very nice wall showcasing some of the smaller fossils, and things like taphonomy and pathology. Here's a cool example of rodent gnaw marks on a bone!

And here are the fused foot bones of a Smilodon! Ouch! 

There's a really excellent fishbowl lab - nobody working there when I visited, since it was a Sunday, but it looks like a pretty busy place with lots on the go!

I also liked how they made it so you could see into the collections area!

Finally, I'll end with this adorably retro display on the process of cataloguing and curating fossils (which I am totally happy to see in a museum exhibit)...featuring punch cards.