Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center - Newsletter January 2009

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	RMDRC News 2009 arrived before we were finished with 2008 so our newsletter is arriving late, so much for deadlines. Like so many of you, we are happy to have a clean slate and make a fresh start. Our thanks go out to all of you for making 2008 a memorable year. Although our nation’s economy remains uncertain, a new year brings a spirit of optimism that we will face the challenges with the “can do” attitude that keeps our nation strong. We are looking forward to many new and exciting events at the RMDRC including our “Darwin and Dinosaurs” exhibit opening on April 4 and a new contest FotoFest 2009 planned for the fall. There will be more fun and educational events this year than ever before so be sure to keep checking our website www.rmdrc.com and the calendar of events for details as they become available. If you have ideas for events that you’d like to see here at the museum, send them to info@rmdrc.com. We’d love to hear from you. Santa visited the museum several times in December. The kids were wide eyed and full of excitement to let him know what they wanted to see under the tree on Christmas morning. RMDRC’s own Visitor Experience Guide, Alan Patton volunteered for the role and did a wonderful job. Our 4^th annual Colorado Kid’s Free Day was held December 30 this year. Mark Straube from “Cool Science” was on hand to entertain the standing room only crowd with his physics experiments. Joining Mark this year was Professor Ron Fursternon of the Air Force Academy. We thank them for making it a fun and educational day for all. In answer to requests from local residents, we are having a special promotion from now through Feb.12 on admissions. On Mondays through Thursdays only, you may purchase one admission and receive one admission of equal or lesser value free. You must request the special promotional price or bring this coupon (click HERE) when you come in. January 1 is the kick-off day for DinoArt 2009. Entry forms are available online (click HERE). Start planning your entry for this year’s contest. Our theme this year is “Darwin and Dinosaurs” in keeping with our new exhibit unveiling April 4. 2009 is the 200^th birthday of Darwin and a year for Darwin celebrations all over the world. As usual, the school with the highest percentage of entries will receive a library of books and we’ve already started collecting them from our publishers. It may be the biggest library we’ve given away. The deadline for artwork and the award ceremony have been moved to earlier in the year so that we give the awards while school is still in session, please make note of the dates! Our winter weather has been especially mild and that gives everyone a better opportunity to come see us at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center. Take advantage of the January promotion and come see us soon. We look forward to your next visit at the RMDRC! Sincerely, JJ Triebold President, RMDRC
	From the Education Desk Welcome to 2009! I’d like to say thank you to all of the children and adults who came to RMDRC in December and made an ornament for our holiday tree. All of the designs are truly wonderful! We hope you enjoyed making not only the ornament for the museum tree, but that the decoration you made to take home will be a special remembrance of RMDRC. The ornament you made for our tree is a reminder of how special all of you are to us at the museum. Thank you for sharing your marvelous talents with us. We are very proud of our educational opportunities at RMDRC. One of these is the fact that you can watch us work in the lab and see specimens in different stages of restoration, from sculpting, molding, casting, welding the framework and painting the completed specimen. Please come and visit us and see all the new things we are doing. There is always something interesting going on. If you have a question, suggestion or a comment, e-mail or call me. I would love to hear from you. Bring the kids to our Hands On area and don’t forget to sign up for the rest of the CAST programs starting January 28 with Green Day/Helping the Earth, February 25 with Craft and Fossil Day and April 15 with Dino Day. Saturday, January 31, the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo will be here from 1:00-3:00 and we will be celebrating Ground Hog Day. The Zoo will bring several different kinds of animals for all to touch and learn about. We are also kicking off our “Dino Art 2009” contest this month. The theme is “Darwin and Dinosaurs”. Marjorie Leggitt will be our guest artist. Pick up an entry form at the museum or go online for an entry and more information. Start drawing…we need your talents! We have many events for the coming year that are planned and we need YOU to make them GREAT! Here’s to an exciting, fun and educational 2009. We are looking forward to seeing you soon. "Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each New Year find you a better man" - Benjamin Franklin Regards, Geri LeBold Education Director geri@rmdrc.com
	From the Business Development Desk Book your school group today! Don't forget about our CAST Program "Community and Students Together" Registration Required Call 686-1820 x 104 Elementary School Days Cost: $7 Middle School Days Cost: $8 Jan. 28 - Green Day/Helping the Earth Feb. 25 - Craft & Fossil Day April 15 - Dino Day What a great place to celebrate your birthday! For a small price children and adults get to enjoy a party in the company of dinosaurs. RMDRC Paleo Patch Program meets all the requirements for the Girl Scouts Dinosaur badge, the Jr. Girl Scout Try-It badge, and some requirements for Boy Scout badges. Call and book your Tour, Birthday Party or Paleo Patch today! Contact us at 719-686-1820 x 104. See you soon! Business Development

	From Triebold Paleontology, Inc. As 2009 begins, a new year full of opportunities is opening up for the staff of TPI. A number of new museum projects, both remodels and new exhibits, are on the horizon. Coast to coast, museums continue to expand and create new learning experiences for visitors young and old. Be sure to support museums around the country during your travels in 2009. Savage Ancient Seas is scheduled to open March 28 at the Reading Public Museum in Reading, PA. Be sure to have any friends and relatives in that area go see some of our fabulous sea monsters! We'll keep you posted on additional venues as they are secured. We're working on a collaboration with the Morrison Museum and Dinosaur Ridge for cross promoting our great dinosaur venues. If you haven't visited Morrison and viewed the phenomenal track ways there in person, it's worth a day trip to check out. We'll have casts of their baby Apatosaurus and stegosaurus tracks on exhibit here at RMDRC in the near future. They are amazing. Some cutting edge scientific papers are going to come out of these finds. Another great facility opening is the Tellus Science Museum of Northwest Georgia located in Cartersville, GA north of Atlanta. www.tellusmuseum.org The official opening date is January 12, 2009. This has been a long project for both our staffs. Our first Apatosaurus cast skeleton is posed in the Great Hall and a number of other TPI skeletons will be featured in the new paleo hall. Be sure to visit with Julian Gray, curator, if you stop in to visit. We were excited and proud to be a part of this great new facility. Here's to a wonderful and prosperous 2009 to us all! (left) Apatosaurus in Great Hall (right) Tellus curator Julian Gray glowing with excitement! Tracie Bennitt Sales and Marketing Triebold Paleontology, Inc. tracie@trieboldpaleontology.com
	News from the Lab Since it is much too cold and snowy for fieldwork, we have started preparation and mounting of a few Pteranodon specimens that we have discovered in Kansas over the past few years. Complete, or even partial Pteranodon fossils are extremely rare, they must have been tasty to scavengers. Most of the time just isolated single bones, or even partial bones are all that is found. Our first project was the preparation and mounting of a fairly complete leg discovered in Logan County in 2006. By its size, we can tell that this was from a large male Pteranodon longiceps, which would have had a wingspan of nearly 20 feet! Truly a giant flying reptile. The second specimen, discovered in Gove County in 2004, is spectacular because of how much of the skeleton is there. Usually dead Pteranodon bodies floated on the Niobrara sea surface because of their hollow air-filled bones. This enabled predators to scavenge them and eat just about everything but the meatless leathery wings (the most commonly found parts). In this specimen an entire wing was preserved, as well as the hands, feet , pelvis, neck and a bit of the tip of the beak! It is a wonderfully complete specimen of a large female Pteranodon sternbergi, one of the best in the world. We will be working on a lot of exciting projects like this in the coming weeks. Stop on in and see the giant Protostega turtle being assembled, our Visitor Experience Guides would be more than happy to show you what we are working on in the lab. Anthony Maltese Curator, Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center 719.686.1820 x106 anthony@rmdrc.com
	Prehistoric Paradise Store - NEW Arrivals Visit the web site to send great gifts to all your family and friends. Click here to start your shopping experience! ______________________________________________________________________ News links for January 2009 Walking with a new species of dinosaur Portsmouth News - Portsmouth,England,UK The creature is a species of pterosaur and the largest of its kind to ever be found. It represents an entirely new genus of the flying reptiles, ... TODAY'S NEWS Washington Post - United States Researchers say they found what appears to be the oldest imprint of a prehistoric insect. The imprint of the dragonfly-like creature was discovered in ... Dinosaurs Were Airheads Science Daily (press release) - USA 8, 2008) — Paleontologists have long known that dinosaurs had tiny brains, but they had no idea the beasts were such airheads. ... Polar Dinosaurs Endured Cold Dark Winters LiveScience.com - New York,NY,USA Bell and Snively's findings were published in the September issue of Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Paleontology. The work was supported by the ... Shipping fragile fossils Packaging Digest - Oak Brook,IL,USA After spending 77 million years underground, a 'mummified' dinosaur is unearthed. An irreplaceable artifact, it's transported in PROTECTIVE PACKAGING from ... 10 Places You May Catch Paleontologists Digging Up Fossils Scientific American - USA Even better, some of these spots feature paleontologists digging and dusting in the hunt for new specimens. This slide show provides a visual sampler of ... Fight over dinosaur death flares anew in SF San Francisco Chronicle - CA, USA She said both fossilized plankton and even \|dinosaur eggs covered with lava found in the Deccan area bore still more testimony to back her theory. ... Dinosaur "ghost" fossil revealed USA Today - USA That is, the ghostly remains of a flying dinosaur bird that lived 150 million years ago. When they're done, using new X-ray technology produced by electrons ... Two new dinosaurs found in ancient Saharan river system Telegraph.co.uk - United Kingdom Dinosaur hunters have discovered two new species while searching an ancient river in the Sahara desert. By Sarah Knapton The beak of a giant flying reptile ... Researchers find short-armed raptor in Argentina Reuters - USA WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An unusual raptor dinosaur found in Argentina is the largest of its kind found so far in the Southern Hemisphere, with awkwardly ... Amazing discovery of dinosaur leg bone Metro - London,UK The leg bone of a new dinosaur species has been found - one that was among the biggest animals to ever walk the Earth. It belongs to a sauropod that may ... Charles Darwin was crazy about dinosaurs MSNBC - USA The first full description of a dinosaur is one of the topics covered in the Transactions of the Geological Society, which will be made available online for ... Many dinosaurs were stay-at-home dads Los Angeles Times - CA,USA By Karen Kaplan Dinosaur dads played an active role in raising their young and often served as single parents, according to a study published Friday in the ... Polygamy, Paternal Care in Birds Linked to Dinosaur Ancestors innovations report (Pressemitteilung) - Schmitten,Hessen,Germany 19 Science found that it runs in this avian family, all the way back to its dinosaur ancestors. Scientists had long wondered about the origins of polygamy ... Dinosaur baby boom hit Cretaceous Korea MSNBC - USA Cretaceous-era Korea was the site of a dinosaur baby boom that resulted in hundreds upon hundreds of dinos, ranging from giant plant eaters to bird-like, ... Raptor dinosaur bones found in Argentina Sydney Morning Herald - Sydney,New South Wales,Australia "The new dinosaur is the largest dromaeosaurid (raptor) yet discovered in the Southern Hemisphere and depicts bizarre cranial and postcranial features," the ... PHOTO IN THE NEWS: Potty-Mouth Dinosaur Had Weird Bite National Geographic - Washington,DC,USA Recently found fossils of the extinct amphibian Gerrothorax pulcherrimus show that the creature lifted its head to eat, rather than lowering its bottom jaw ...

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URL: http://www.rmdrc.com/news/RMDRC_newsletter_0908.htm Last Updated: Jan 2009