From the Education Desk
Kid’s
Fest at the Ute Pass Cultural Center was a roaring success this year
and we had a great time at our booth having the visitors doing color
rubbings of the dinosaurs, touching claws and teeth and best of all
getting up close with the skull of Pebbles the Albertosaurus.
The
symposium that Catamount Institute put on at Colorado College was
another opportunity for us to have a booth and meet students from
all over Colorado. What a fun day for us and an exciting day for
the students with all their science projects.
This month I would like to give you a brief overview of our Marine
Room exhibits.
Believe it
or not, one of the best places to find marine fossils of the
Cretaceous Period is the high plains of Western Kansas. We do much
of our excavation in the Niobrara Formation in Kansas. Around 85
million years ago, a shallow sea covered the North American
continent from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Arctic Circle.
This sea was teeming with life and many states such as North and
South Dakota, Texas and Colorado were under water. Eventually the
marine animals died and drifted to the bottom of the sea floor, were
buried and many over time became fossilized.
You can see
many of these creatures right here at RMDRC that inhabited the
Cretaceous seas. You can see ammonites that grew up to 5 feet in
diameter. An animal lived inside the shell and they would grab their
food with tentacles. They are similar to the Nautilus of today.
The
Pentanogmius fish is a fairly new exhibit at the museum. It was
about 5 feet in length with small comb-like teeth and a dorsal fin
which ran the length of the body. Complete specimens are extremely
rare, with only 3 ever discovered in the past 140 years.
We also have
one of the great predatory fish of that time, the Xiphactinus.
This one is 17 feet long!
The
Pachyrhizodus, which is built like a grouper, preyed upon
smaller fish and were prey to the many larger prehistoric fish.
Our Marine
Room has Clidastes, the smallest of the mosasaurs, and an
agile and fast swimmer, Platecarpus, a top predator of the
world’s oceans, and “ORM”, the most complete specimen of the
Tylosaurus kansasensis ever discovered.
Elasmosaurus is 42 feet long with 73 vertebrae in the neck. This
specimen started what historians called the “Bone Wars” of American
paleontology. Come take a tour with us and find out why!
When you see
the mouth of the Megalodon shark, I am sure you will be very
glad it is extinct. It was 50 feet long and weighed 50 tons! This
was the largest of the sharks, living or extinct.
A trip to
our museum would not be complete without looking through the windows
at our working paleo lab to see how our paleo technicians work on
the fossils we bring back from the field. Next month I will tell
you more about this process and about mold making and casting.
Do come for
a visit and join us on a fascinating tour of this world class
museum. Taking a tour, (which is included in your admission price),
is the best way to take advantage of everything we have to offer.
It lasts about 1 hour and you will gather information that is only
available from taking the tour. Your admission ticket is good until
we close. Ask questions of your guide on the tour, go out and have
lunch, come back and take a second look at the exhibits that
interested you the most, watch the movies, let the kids enjoy the
hands on area and read the exhibit signs at your leisure.
We hope you
include us in your summer plans…I know you will have a great time at
the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center, and we are looking
forward to having you with us.
Regards,
Geri LeBold
Education Director
geri@rmdrc.com
May
9th is 
National
Children’s Book Week
will be celebrated May 10th-16th at the
Rocky Mountain Dinosaur
Resource Center.
