Amazing New Discoveries
“The beauty of paleontology is that we’re constantly finding out new things,” says Dr. Peter Makovicky, curator of dinosaurs at The Field Museum. “It’s a field that constantly rejuvenates itself.”
Makovicky should know. He’s done ground-breaking research on three of the new dinosaur species discovered in China’s Liaoning Province, home to some of the most important and best-preserved fossil beds in the world. This is where, for example, the first feathered dinosaurs made world-wide headlines – and changed our view of birds forever.
You’ll come face-to-face with dozens of extraordinary creatures like these in the exhibition’s centerpiece: a 700-square-foot recreation of a Liaoning forest as it might have looked 130-million years ago. Here a Microraptor, wing-like feathers on its arms and legs, glides between trees; a badger-sized mammal stalks a group of baby parrot-beaked dinosaurs; a small dinosaur sleeps like a bird, with its head tucked under its forearm and its tail encircling its body. The open diorama – there are no glass walls between you and the forest! – includes a host of life-like dinosaurs, unfamiliar mammals, extinct and living plants, huge insects, primitive birds, and more familiar-looking amphibians and fish. Some of these are being shown to the public for the first time.
“The geography of this area in China did an amazing job of preserving not only bones but soft tissue,” Makovicky says. “We’ve been able to see feathers and protofeathers [early, feather-like fibers], and even the veins on insect wings.” The exhibition shows what these delicate finds tell scientists about the evolution of feathers and flight.
Cool New Technologies
Remember the scene in Jurassic Park where a T. rex pursues our heroes at speeds of 45 miles an hour? That plot twist will have to be updated, according to the latest experiments in biomechanics. Scientists and movie directors now have new information on just how fast a creature of that size and shape really could run – and it’s probably about half that speed.
The new generation of paleontologists – like Peter Makovicky – are as much biologists as geologists, studying dinosaurs not only as dead fossils but as living biological entities. Collaborating with engineers, computer scientists, and others, they constantly test and retest their hypotheses.
You’ll see what that means when you encounter the coolest mechanical dino ever: a six-foot, walking, stalking T. rex skeleton – the most accurate model ever built of how the creature moved. Next to it, at a touch-screen station, you can conduct your own virtual experiments, just like the scientists, to see how changing muscle mass, posture, or center of gravity would affect the speed of a rampaging T. rex and other animals, including humans. Vying for the “coolest dino” title is a stunning 60-foot-long Apatosaurus skeleton, its gleaming metallic arcs shaped by computer analysis; you can watch a two-dimensional version of it add layers of bone, muscle, and skin on a giant animated screen.
High-tech tools like these open new doors for scientists as well as museum visitors. Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries shows how our understanding of ancient life is expanding with the help of a host of new technologies – from engineering software that allows scientists to investigate dinosaur movements, to high-tech imaging that lets them look inside fossils and see the outlines of dinosaur brains.
Continue>>
