Smithsonian.com

Stegosaurs of Terror!!!! “Most of us think as Stegosaurus as plodding, dimwitted giants only fit to end up as plates of meat for a hungry predator,” observes the World We Don’t Live In. “And yet, despite all this negative publicity, Stegosaurus has had its shining moments. Various authors have latched onto stegs as a potential deadly killer.” Be sure to check out this lively, pop-culture overview of lethal Stegosaurs…if you dare.

Archival photo from Cleveland Natural History Museum collections. Courtesy of Palaeoblog

Of course, a Brontosaurus would prefer a convertible: A classic photo from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History Archives, courtesy of Palaeoblog.

It’s a British Thing: “What is it with English people and dinosaurs?” asks Bob’s Dinosaur Blog. (Haven’t we all asked that question?) In March, a group of drunk college students from Kingston Maurward College in Dorchester were caught trying to steal a 20-foot-long Triceratops model from the local museum. And now, thieves have made off with dozens of valuable artifacts from Dinostar, “Yorkshire’s only dinosaur visitor attraction.”

Pit Stop: Dinochick alerts us to a new blog—“The Burpee Museum of Natural History”—which will feature ongoing updates on the excavation of a recently discovered dinosaur bone pit in southern Utah.

Next Time You’re in Poland: The “Thrifty Expat,” always on the lookout for cheap entertainment options when abroad, recommends two dinosaur parks in Warsaw: Park Dinozaurów and Zaurolandia (which has an English-language website where you can play Jurassic versions of popular video games such as Zauropac and Dinotris).

Handiwork: Could a Velociraptor really turn a doorknob, as in Jurassic Park? David Hone explains why theropods are “clappers, not slappers.” The news, however, offers little comfort to the folks over at Tyrannosaur Chronicles, who regale us with their harrowing photoshopped exploits when they were attacked by raptors in their own museum.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

There appear to be three themes that pop up in many of the major summer blockbusters being released this year: time travel, robots, and dinosaurs. I have already covered two of this summer’s bigger dino-flicks, Ice Age 3 and Land of the Lost, but the newly-released Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian also features a CGI-created dinosaur.

Unlike the dinosaurs in the other two films, the Tyrannosaurus in Night at the Museum 2 is only partially brought back to life. It is the skeleton from New York’s Natural History Museum that goes rollicking through the halls when the museum closes its doors, not unlike the one that begged for french fries in that old McDonald’s commercial. That, of course, is fantasy, but the similar dinosaur skeletons housed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History must look pretty imposing when all the lights go off.

Some museums (but so far not including NMNH [Ed note: oops.]) are allowing visitors to spend the night. Boston.com contributor Geoff Edgers recently wrote of his experience staying overnight at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York regularly runs sleepovers for children. I wish such events were not just offered to kids though; I would love to spend a night at the museum, too!

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Part of the femur of an unknown theropod. From the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology paper.

Weird new dinosaurs and exquisltely-preserved fossils regularly make headlines, but these discoveries make up only a tiny portion of what paleontologists actually discover and work with. The majority of the fossil record is far more fragmentary, and while little scraps of bone might not cause journalists to start drooling they are just as important to understanding ancient life.

Take the case of a bit of femur, or thighbone, described in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Described by Catherine Forster, Andrew Farke, Jacob McCartney, William De Klerk and Callum Ross, the small bit of bone was recovered from rock in South Africa dating to about 140 million years ago. The fossils in that area are very fragmentary, it is not the sort of place you would expect to find an articulated skeleton, but there is enough there to know the area was once roamed by a diverse group of dinosaurs.

Among the collection of dinosaurs at the site was a small predatory coelurosaur called Nqwebasaurus (try saying that 10 times fast), but when scientists described it they found fragments from a second, unknown theropod dinosaur. This is the dinosaur the recently described femur came from, but what sort of dinosaur was it?

With so little to go on, the authors of the new paper were unsure of precisely what sort of dinosaur it might be, but it seemed to belong to the tetanurae, one of the great groups of theropod dinosaurs. There was another group of varied theropods during the time called the abelisauridae, but a number of characteristics of this fossil do not match that group. Instead it does seem to be a tetanuran, but more fossils will be needed to more fully understand what it is. For now this nameless fossil hints that there is much more yet to find, and I certainly hope that paleontologists can recover the rest of this tiny, ancient predator.

Sequels and remakes have been the name of the game for Hollywood during the past few years. Every summer sees re-imaginings of television shows or movies I saw as a kid, but there is one that is probably better left alone: Denver, the Last Dinosaur.

The basic plot of Denver is pretty standard (and would later be echoed by the movie Encino Man). A group of kids finds an unattended dinosaur egg in a pit. The egg promptly hatches, revealing a green dinosaur with a mohawk-like spike on its head. As per convention, the dinosaur (named Denver, of course) is not only friendly but pretty darned smart, and together he and the kids have lots of wacky adventures.

Maybe this general storyline could be resuscitated, but Denver was the kind of show that could have only existed in the 1980s. Pink sunglasses, spandex-wearing metal bands, big hair, skateboarding, and garishly colored clothes made up much of the background of the show. As painful as it would be to watch, if Denver were brought back without these little touches it just wouldn’t be the same.

I don’t think anyone is thinking of bringing Denver back to life, though. The show attempted to capitalize on the dino-mania sparked by the animated film The Land Before Time, but by the end of the second season the dinosaur craze had ebbed. The producers let the show go extinct. While it might be fun to go back and watch the cheesy original episodes, I think Denver has had enough adventures.

An illustration of Caudipteryx

If you are a dinophile in the vicinity of Baltimore, Maryland, you may want to clear your plans for this weekend. Tomorrow, the Maryland Science Center in the city’s Inner Harbor will raise the curtain on the traveling exhibit “Chinasaurs-Dinosaur Dynasty.” The webpage promoting the exhibit promises over 20 dinosaur skeletons, animatronic dinosaurs, and lots of artwork connecting dinosaurs to China’s cultural heritage.

I am sure there will be some casts of feathered dinosaurs in with the rest of the skeletons, and it looks like this is an exhibit that is not to be missed. It will run through September of this year. Even if you can’t make it, though, the Maryland Science Center has a whole hall dedicated to dinosaurs and is chock-full of other fantastic skeletons. I may just have to make a trip to Baltimore soon!