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Building the Dinosaur Program- the Morrison Formation... YAY !!


fossilsonwheels

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It is with a good bit of giddy enthusiasm that we share our very first Jurassic dinosaur fossils. We have a start to our Morrison Formation collection and I am so excited to take these into class. This is also a proud moment because my son and I earned these fossils with our hard work. This is a gift to our program from us and a gift to the kids we want to educate. They are also big hunks of dino bone. We needed a couple of larger bones for these programs for visual flair and these fit the bill for our budget. It will be a week before they arrive but I am too excited to wait lol

 

One of the things we learned from our first dinosaur program was that 2nd graders learn about Diplodocus when they study dinosaurs. It was a species they knew. So we purchased a partial Diplo coracoid bone. It is a 15" x 11" x 9" hunk of dinosaur bone that weighs 12 lbs. Our largest and heaviest fossil. This one will really get the attention of the kids I think and gives us a the opportunity to feature Diplo in the program :)

 

We also added two partial Camarasaurus ribs that fused together during fossilization. It is 14" x 9" so it is good sized and is a great example of the geological process they are learning about. This gives us an additional Sauropod to cover in the program and lest us talk more about niches. This will be a great fossil for the kids to touch as well. We are also adding a few pounds of chunkasaurus bones. Perfect dino fossils for hands on exploration and a few special give away dino bones too.

 

The pictures are not great, not sure why but I will upload more when they arrive. Here are the big ones....

 

Picture 1- Diplo coracoid

 

Picture 2 Cam ribs

diplocoracoid1.jpg

camribs.jpg

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Very cool pieces. I really like the idea of your program, you will make a lot of future palaeontologists :)

Life started in the ocean. And so did my interest in fossils;).

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On 3/19/2019 at 8:37 AM, indominus rex said:

Very cool pieces. I really like the idea of your program, you will make a lot of future palaeontologists :)

Thank you. I sure hope we do.

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  • 3 weeks later...

So our Morrison bones arrived and they are beautiful pieces. Yes they are partials but they serve two very important roles. They represent the massive size of Sauropods and they give us material from an era that we need to cover. Today is a Fossils on Wheels work day so I wanted to update this, post some pictures, and get into more detail about what we teach.

 

The first fossil in the batting order is Diplodocus. I was very surprised by the number of kids that knew what Diplodocus was so this will be a fossil we use often but not all the time. It is the more fragile of the two large bones so it will not be used in every program. The biology is these massive animals is really quite interesting. As one of the longest dinosaurs ever, it has star appeal for sure. My guess it kids will love hearing about the whip like tail that had 80 vertebrae and may have been a defensive weapon. In our adaptation programs we will also discuss how the neck and teeth likely gave it a different style of feeding than other sauropods. This would have given it a different niche which helps explains how so many different long necks could have co-existed. I am actually really quite excited to have a good sized hunk of Diplo bone and I look forward to teaching kids about these remarkable animals.

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Thanks to a purchase and an amazing donation from @Flx , Camarasaurus will be one of our featured species in all future dinosaur presentations. The fused ribs bones are pretty sturdy, should travel well and are big enough to make an impression. I really did not know much about Camarasaurus until I started really studying them about a month ago. As far as adaptations, the diet of coarse plant material would be good but we do not have teeth so I think we may get into the respiratory system and how specialized it must have been given the large size of sauropods. The hollow bones, pneumatic sacs and stiff lungs allowed for one direction air flow which was needed given their size. I think this is complex for elementary students and presents a good challenge to them in understanding how specialized the biology of these massive creatures were.

 

We are also very lucky to have a number of Camarasaurus fragments that the kids can handle and examine.

 

These are the the fused ribs. This will be a durable show piece for us. I love it. A very cool fossil and a bargain.

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These are Camarasaurus fossils donated by @Flx . These include a restored caudal vert, a prezygapophysis, several rib fragments, and a lot of small fragments that are ideal for hands-on examination. We have a really nice assortment of Camarasaurus fossils now and we look forward to taking these with us for all dinosaurs programs we do !!!

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