Who doesn't love dinosaurs? :) I'm trying to get the categorization of them straight in my head.
Dinos belong to a group called Archosaurs, which include crocodilians, birds, pterosaurs and dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are divided into two groups: Ornithischians and Saurischians. I will attempt to summarize, but here is a very helpful diagram to start off, and if you'd like a very good reference with more diagrams and tons of good information, go to the source of this diagram.
Hooray for dinosaurs. Took a little weekend trip to Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, Utah. Last time we went there (3 years ago I think), the Quarry was closed due to earthquake activity messing up the building. So I was super excited to go back to the Quarry this time. I hadn't been there since I went with my family when I was little. I have vivid memories of seeing it, and it was much as I remember it. All those fossils everywhere were a huge feast for the eyes and very exciting to realize it's a ton of REAL fossils - not casts or replicas, and they're actually in the mountain in the actual place where they were originally deposited.
But the best thing is that Human Anatomy (the class) helped me really enjoy this a lot more! So because of my background with osteology from Human Anatomy, I could pick out and name a lot of the bones. I love that bones have the same names across species. I want to go back and re-memorize all the bony landmarks. I was really excited to find a large vertebra from a sauropod (Apatosuarus), pictured here and labeled with the bony landmarks (assuming they're the same as in humans). I was trying to decide if this was thoracic or lumbar vertebra and then I found the costal fovea which made me pretty excited. ("Costal" means rib, FYI - that's the spot where the rib attaches.)
Apatosaurus thoracic vertebra
My favorite find (and this was something that I did find on my own) was a well articulated radius, ulna, carpels, metacarpels and phalanges of the front limb of an Allosaurus! The ranger said that is the only carnivore fossil in the wall she knows of. It was totally awesome! Major geek factor.
Out of focus of course. My batteries were dying so this was a hastily taken picture.
Radius, ulna, carpals, metacarpals and phalanges
The ranger pointed out a "butterfly shaped" bone:
This is the hip bone of the Apatosaurus. It occurred to me that the top part of our hip bones is called the "wing of the Ilium". So pretty fitting here that it actually looks like wings of a butterfly. :)
My kids got bored with me gawking over the bones for so long. They thought it was really cool too, they just don't have the same attention span for it as I do. :) Luckily the ranger was super awesome and had a backpack full of casts and diagrams to help occupy them.
My 7-year-old did tell me last night before even going to the Quarry or museum that he knows what he wants to be when he grows up: a Paleontologist. :) Then of course today my 4-year-old jumped on that bandwagon too (he's already expressed a good amount of interest in it though - and really, what boy doesn't like dinosaurs?). We'll see if that pans out for either of them. I would definitely approve of and encourage it. Even if it doesn't end up as a profession for them, it's awesome to learn about.
A dinosaur I had never heard of before They Might Be Giants came along:
But since then I've watched a National Geographic documentary that featured Pachy and I gave my 4-year-old a toy one with a book that features it.
So to be somewhat scientific to fit with the theme of my blog, and because teaching is the best way to learn (yes, I'm counting posting on a blog as teaching, so what?), I will share what I've learned about this dinosaur- including stuff I'm just now looking up! :D
Word roots! Pachys means thick; cephalic - of or pertaining to the head. "Thick headed." I know a couple of people that could fit that description. Maybe I'll start referring to them as pachycephalic and no one will even know I'm making fun of them. :)
So this documentary was called Dinosaurs Decoded and the basic premise was that 1/3 of dinosaur species never existed but were really just juvenille forms of other dinosaurs. This seemed intriguing to me and brought back to mind the time I visited the BYU Museum of Paleontology and there was what looked like a small T-Rex (Torvosaurus or Allosaurus), which I shrugged off as my ignorance (which is still a valid dismissal- to the untrained observer, which I am, a lot of things that are very different may look the same). But it did serve to plant the question in my head- don't they find fossils of younger individuals of the same species? I don't remember ever seeing any fossils designated as juveniles or infants.
So are Dracorex and Stygimoloch really juvenille Pachycephalosaurus?
Obviously I know almost nothing about Paleontology (for now), so I'm just regurgitating what I heard on the documentary. I have no idea if the scientific community accepts this theory or what the current status of the issue is. So stoked for my Prehistoric Life class this semester to learn more about this stuff. I don't have time or funds to take more classes on Paleontology or Historical Geology, so hoping this class will cover the basics to the point I feel satisfied with a general knowledge of the subjects.
So go watch the video again- you know you want to. Who can resist a Pachycephalosaurus that plays on the swings with you? Seriously. My 4-year-old goes around the house singing, "I am a Paleontologist..that's what I am, that's what I am, that's what I am." Except it sounds like, "I am a pain in the tologist." Well, I do often agree with that first part, but what the heck is a tologist?
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