Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Ancient Monsters: T-Rex

The next part of the exhibit is the main hall where the T-Rex's and a few other dinosaurs are. Let me hit some of the highlights in this blog. I continue it in the next one.

The first one you see is that of Camptosaurus. This dinosaur lived in the late Jurassic period. Somewhere around 160-145 million years ago. Right next to the above dinosaur is Carnotaurus. He has bull-like horns on top of his head. Carnotaurus lived in the late Cretaceous about 75 million years ago.The above two are cool, but the dinosaur I was very curious about was the Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils in the exhibit. They have a bunch, but the main one I wanted to focus on is the one they call "Thomas". He is the star of the whole exhibit and is one of the most complete T-Rex fossils in existence. Here is his skull: A different angle through the glass case they have the skull in.What it looks like they did is they keep the skull separate from the rest of his body for this exhibit. So, what you see in the next picture is a fossilized model attached the real fossilized body.They have a few T-Rex's in the middle of the main exhibit hall to show you the sizes of them compared to the ages they think they were. It goes from about two years of age to roughly around 17 years of age when it comes to "Thomas". This one is supposed to be around 14 years old.This is "Thomas" standing over the one that is supposed to be around two years old:Another view of "Thomas". He was found in Montana and lived roughly around 67-65 million years ago.

Ancient Monsters: T-Rex (Youtube Version)

Ancient Monsters: T-Rex (Vimeo Version)

A few links for you. There are enough books out there on dinosaurs that I should not do this. However, if you want a quick reference then these Wikipedia articles should get you started:

Camptosaurus (Wikipedia Article)

Carnotaurus (Wikipedia Article)

Tyrannosaurus Rex (Wikipedia Article)

The L.A. Natural History Museum

I put this in my video notes, but I should do it here too:

1)Most of the dates I give are very broad based on a few local library and online sources. I just wanted to get the periods they lived right. So, if you are a hardcore dinosaur person, and I am not as precise as you would like, then sorry. ;)

2)No one knows what these creatures actually sounded like. The sounds are just used for artistic effect.

The titles of the music used are Deep Noise, Blue Sizzle, and Interloper from Incompetch.com songs.