Week 11 (March 19 - 25, 2015)

As your final comments to our class blog, I am hoping you will share what you found interesting about your study of dinosaurs this quarter.  Was there one particular discovery that you were not expecting, maybe something that profoundly changed your thinking or that you couldn't wait to share with others?  Or maybe some very specific detail stood out as the most bizarre thing you had ever heard!  If you are a movie fan, will you be watching the "Jurassic World" movie in a different way?  If you visit natural history museums, will you be particularly interested in checking on certain features of the dinosaur exhibit?  And do you have any words for young dinosaur enthusiasts who might want to know what "real dinosaurs" are about?  Thanks for these thoughts and all your comments during the past 11 weeks!  Dr. B.

Week 10 (March 12 - 18, 2015)

As we wind down the quarter over these next two weeks, I wondered if you could consider a more whimsical request.  One of my favorite little books is entitled "How to Keep Dinosaurs:  The Complete Guide to Bringing Up Your Beast" (by Robert Mash, 1983).  The book is written very lovingly with "serious humor" as you can tell from this introduction:  "I intend this book mainly as a help to average pet lovers who wish to keep a dinosaur or two in their house or garden.  I also talk about some species that are best left, perhaps, to large land-owners that need a lot of space... (T)here are many, many species that are small and manageable enough to be kept successfully as pets, and many that are ideal for farming and other purposes."  His chapters include:  "Dinosaurs as Lap Pets", "Dinosaurs for Riding", "Dinosaurs for Police Work", "Dinosaurs for Eggs", "Dinosaurs for Zoos" and quite a few additional chapters.

I think that the new "Jurassic World" movie is trying to scare us about the idea of dinosaurs living amongst us today, but what about a more "realistic" view from someone (you!) who has just read a bit about the real nature of these creatures?  If you were able to clone just one dinosaur species, which one would it be and how would you keep it?  Would it be a pet or a work animal, and how would you use its abilities?  Where would you put it, how would you feed it, what precautions might you take for its safety (and your own!) and what issues might come up because this is a creature brought back to life in an environment quite different from the Mesozoic?  What would you study about it and what would you hope to learn?

I am excited to find out what you come up with!  Dr. B.

Week 9 (March 5 - 11, 2015)

I’m thrilled to report that several professional paleontologists have graciously taken time to share some answers to the challenging questions you all posted on Week 5 of this blog.  Please read over their comments (linked at the end of this post) and then provide your own response to what they shared with us.  Please do also acknowledge the time they spent to contribute their experiences and insights to our learning!  These are the scientists who answered your questions:

Dr. Mary Schweitzer is a Professor at North Carolina State University as well as Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences.  As we know from our textbook reading and from recent news reports, she is the first researcher to discover dinosaur soft tissue still present within the femur of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex!  Dr. Schweitzer recently published a personal and wonderfully engaging commentary that can serve as an answer to the question: “Why Study Dinosaurs?”  I encourage you to read it here:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dinosaurs-offer-a-rich-field-for-study-of-the-human-era/ .

Dr. David Fastovsky is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Rhode Island.  He is also, of course, a co-author of our class textbook.  His worldwide research has taken him to Mexico and Mongolia and to many locations across the Western U.S.  This website http://web.uri.edu/celsnews/dinosaur-expert-finding-the-past-is-a-window-to-earths-future/ provides a nice news report on his recent work on the very earliest dinosaurs.  By the way, Dr. Fastovsky likes to bring his viola on his field trips perhaps to serenade the ancient bones being revealed!

Dr. Jerry Harris is an Associate Professor and Director of Paleontology at Dixie State College in Utah.  He has traveled throughout the world from China to Patagonia to right next door in Montana and New Mexico to study dinosaurs and their contemporaries.  He has especially researched trace fossil evidence of ancient behaviors of a menagerie of creatures including dinosaurs, flying reptiles (pterosaurs), ancient crocodile relatives and early birds.  Above all, Dr. Harris is an extraordinary educator whose well-designed teaching materials (like the slideshows we have seen) clearly explain important concepts as well as capture his wonderfully perceptive and engaging sense of humor.  Here is a nice interview with Jerry: http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2008/04/24/paleontological-profiles-jerry/.

Dr. Stephen Brusatte is a Vertebrate Paleontologist and Evolutionary Biologist at the University of Edinburgh.  He has undertaken field research throughout the world from places like New Mexico and Montana in the USA to Portugal, Romania, Poland and China.  Dr. Brusatte has published many accessible books on dinosaurs including two of my very favorites:  A more technical book “Dinosaur Paleobiology” (2012) and the awesome “Dinosaurs” (2008), a wonderful “coffee table” book which is (appropriately) the physically largest book ever published on dinosaurs.  His website at https://sites.google.com/site/brusatte/home links to much more about his research studies and publications as well as to the educational videos he has produced.  Did I mention that he also was a consultant to the “Walking with Dinosaurs” movie that was in theaters last year?

(Dr.) Jessie Atterholt is a researcher in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California in Berkeley.  She is just completing her Ph. D. program with a focus on the evolution of birds through the study of bone histology.  In the lab, she has been doing CT scans of modern bird carcasses.  In the field, she has been uncovering fossil birds from Cretaceous deposits throughout the world.  And, in the classroom, she has been volunteering to teach first-grade students about science.  My daughter and I met Jessie on a trip to China to visit some of the sites where the feathered dinosaur fossils have been found.  She is an inspirational young scientist with a great deal of field experience to share!  This website will introduce you to her:  http://ib.berkeley.edu/labs/lindberg/atterholt.html. 

 Here is the link to the personal comments that these paleontologists shared with us:  http://facweb.northseattle.edu/tbraziunas/geol106tb_canvas/studentquestions_responses.pdf

Thanks for your reporting back to them!  Dr. B. 

Week 8 (February 26 - March 4, 2015)

Thank you for sharing out so much interesting and perceptive information on this blog!  How about we review and express our appreciation for the insights, knowledge and references shared with one another over the past seven weeks?

So this week please review the blog comments of your classmates from previous weeks and then pick two (from different weeks and by different classmates) that you found especially fun and/or intriguing and/or revelatory to read.  You may have many more than two so the ones you pick won't be indicative of being "best" in any way but just in line for some of your good feedback!  Please be sure to choose at least one of your picks to be by someone not yet acknowledged (if possible) so we spread the thanks to all contributors.

Identify the author (your classmate) and the posting topic in each case  and share out what you enjoyed about that posting.  I know there has been a good amount of work in this course and we haven't all had a chance to catch up on the contributions of one another here, so this is a chance to look back at them!

Thanks.  Dr. B.

Week 7 (February 19 - 25, 2015)

Trace fossils provide important clues about the activities of ancient organisms (like non-avian dinosaurs!).  Such fossils include the isolated footprints and extensive trackways left by dinosaurs which can tell a lot about their social behavior and life history.  Many other types of trace fossils also exist.  Recent and past discoveries include dinosaur burrows, tooth marks (on other dinosaur bones), poop (coprolites), feeding marks on plant fossils and even some rare instances of liquid waste (urolites) and regurgitates (fossil vomit -- sometimes called Jurassic puke).  Maybe I need to stop there! :)

Some paleontologists include egg shells as "trace fossils" but I think most consider them to be "body fossils."  However, just like dinosaur footprints which have their own "species names", so do egg shells because they have certain distinct characteristics but usually cannot be conclusively associated with a specific dinosaur species.

The cool nature of "trace fossils" is that they can tell "stories" related directly to dinosaur behavior, not just physical appearance.  I am hoping you can contribute one (and only one) recent dinosaur trace fossil discovery beyond the information in our text book.  This finding should be one that hasn't already been contributed by another class member.  Please describe the discovery and its importance in your own words, and also provide a link to the source of information so the rest of us can learn more about it too.  Thanks!  Dr. B.

Week 6 (February 12 - 18, 2015)

This week I'm asking that we take a look around to see who else is blogging about dinosaurs!  I have seen dozens (hundreds!) of wonderful blogs about dinosaurs, some being more technical and others being more whimsical.  Still other blogs can be very technical or very personal or just plain funny or somewhat outlandish!  I know of many cool blogs that are associated with college paleontology departments, with museums and with individual scientists who have lots of interesting ideas and information to share.  I also know of blogs that focus just on dinosaur toys or movies or games.  They all usually have something new to share.

The assignment this week is to find a blog about dinosaurs that you find interesting, amusing and/or surprising (but not wildly inappropriate for our PG-rated class!).  Provide a link to it and explain why you think it is worth sharing with the rest of us.  You need to tell us something about the owner of the blog.  It should have a relatively recent posting (in the last year or so for sure).  And let us know something you learned from the blog that relates to what we are reading about in class.  However, it doesn't have to be too serious or highly educational!

To earn all the points, your  blog discovery should be one that no one else has yet posted about.  There are many dinosaur-related blogs out there.  A a simple search on "dinosaur blog" will yield many possibilities! I'm looking forward to finding out who else is blogging and maybe which new blogs to start following.  Thanks.  Dr. B. 

Week 5 (February 5 - 11, 2015)

For the last couple weeks we imagined that we had traveled somewhere in the world and also around this country to prospect for dinosaur remains at locations known to be "fruitfully fossiliferous" in the past.  We used the information we found online to recreate field excursions for ourselves.

Wouldn't it be great to know a bit more from those who have actually made such excursions?  What would we especially like to know from a field paleontologist about her/his adventures, discoveries and interpretations?

Please share a question you would love to ask someone who could reveal the realities of this profession -- the good, the bad and the surprising about it!  What is it about "dinosaur hunting" that you would like to ask someone who has first-hand knowledge?  You might be interested in the science or just the practical aspects of fossil prospecting.  Maybe you want to know what advice  she / he might provide for anyone of us who may be thinking of pursuing such a career ... or may just be thinking of exploring for a fossil now and then!

I am hoping you will choose one question that you are most eager to have answered but has not been asked yet by someone else in the class already.  Post it here this week.  I will then share all our questions with a number of renowned (and/or emerging) paleontologists to seek their help in teaching us more.  Some of these scientists may be the same ones whom we identified on this blog and in our homework and class discussion room over the last few weeks as among the many researchers we admired. 

I will ask a number of paleontologists to read your questions after the week is over and then send their comments on them directly to me.  I will post all those comments on this blog in the week after next so we each have a chance to read and respond back to their contributions to our learning.  We might be surprised by some of what we learn!

Thanks!  Dr. B.

Week 4 (January 29 - February 4, 2015)

It was fun to read all the world-wide adventures last week!  The imaginary excursions started with a trip to Antarctica and continued on to the continents of Australia, Asia (Mongolia, South Korea, China, India), Africa (Tanzania), Europe (England, Scotland, Germany), South America (Peru, Venezuela, Brazil) and North America (Mexico).  Did I miss any?  (If you didn't follow the instructions for the post, you may not have earned all the points -- so do carefully read each week's "rules" before commenting.)

What about a similar imaginary trip to a place in the United States?  Where in our 50 states should we go to have an excellent chance of finding dinosaur bones?  I need as exact a location as you can provide such as what town is nearby or what highway passes close to our "prospecting" area.  So your assignment this week is to find a prospecting location in just one state -- but not a state already chosen by someone else who has posted earlier.

The best way to find a likely spot is to learn where dino bones have already been found.  If you do a Google search on dinosaur fossil discoveries from a specific state, you will probably locate where an exciting dino find has already occurred.  Please report about that discovery here (and provide a link to your source).  You need to provide enough detail such that we could all get in a van and follow your directions to head over there right away to find more dino bones (after checking on current field conditions like snow level!).

I can tell you that some states are much easier places to find dino fossils than other states.  So the earlier you investigate and report, the easier this task will be.  There are 28 students in this class so we are hoping to assemble a trip through 28 of our states.  I'm looking forward to planning out what would be a fun and productive (and, unfortunately, imaginary) trip for this class to take!  Thanks for good directions as I map out our itinerary!  Dr. B.

  

Week 3 (January 22 - 28, 2015)

Last week we learned and shared information about paleontologists who study dinosaurs.  This week, let's imagine a field trip to find our own dinosaur remains!  Search the Internet for news of dinosaur discoveries in places outside of North America and China.  Figure out how you, yourself, would get to the same location and what it would be like to join in a field trip to prospect for dinosaur treasures where the earlier discoveries were made.

Choose a country that has not already been commented on.  So be sure to read what others have posted so you can look for a different spot.  Choose just one country, describe the location of the dinosaur discovery and details about that specific dinosaur fossil (and share a link to the information about this find).  Describe the conditions under which you would be working to find more of the same dinosaur remains at the same spot.

For example, I will say that I have decided to travel to Ethiopia to collect more dinosaur teeth just like those teeth collected by paleontologist Mark Goodwin and his crew along the cliffs of the Blue Nile Gorge.  Here is a link to some photos from one of the sites that the Goodwin team visited:  http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mesozoic/bluenile.html.

Just like that team, I flew into the city of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia (on this imaginary trip).  I had brought collecting gear with me but still needed to acquire sacks and boxes to securely and safely hold any fossils my team would collect.  So I visited the market place, an exciting and loud experience, where many people were selling spices, clothes, jewelry and household items of all sorts.  After that I went to the "Authority for Research" in Ethiopia and obtained my collecting permit.   Details ("field notes") of this part of the trip can be found here:  http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/science/fieldnotes/goodwin_0801.php.

To make a longer story short, we drove our jeeps down to the fossil location which is along the great Rift Valley (see photographs on the links above).  We had to hike down to the base of tall cliffs of mudstone that were Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous in age.  Most of the fossils that we found were fragments of bone and teeth from dinosaurs and mammals.  It was a great trip, a bit hot and buggy, but well worth the effort and three weeks we spent there.

So that is the story of my imaginary trip to Ethiopia.  No one else can now choose Ethiopia for the country of their own field trip.  Now tell us about your adventure!  Thanks.  Dr. B. 

Week 2 (January 15 - 21, 2015)

This week I'm asking that you find a paleontologist you would really like to work with ... at least in your imagination! 

We have begun our study of dinosaurs by learning about the scientists who first produced some of the scientific research on dinosaurs in the 1800s and early 1900s.  And one of this week's homework questions does ask you to "choose to join" one of four very interesting paleontologists from those earlier times:  Charles Sternberg, Barnum Brown, Werner Janensch and Franz Baron Nopcsa.  We have many more such fascinating scientists doing exciting dinosaur research today, and they are not restricted to that "white male" category that represented most of those earlier workers.

So please find information and share your thoughts about a current dinosaur paleontologist with whom you think it would be fun to work (or just "tag along"!).  Choose just one researcher, describe who that person is and what she/he is working on, add your reasons for especially being interested in what this scientist (or graduate student) is doing... and, finally, share a link.  It would be great to expand our introduction to dinosaur paleontologists by choosing someone other than a "middle-aged white male (with a beard)" as mostly is pictured in Chapter 14 of our textbook!

Thanks.  Dr. B. 

Week 1 (January 5 - 14, 2015)

Here is our first public task to start our class!  Our textbook was published in 2012 so it needs just a bit of updating.  The last two years have been two of the most exciting ones with respect to new dinosaur discoveries and insights so there is no shortage of updates which can be contributed!  So please find a recent dinosaur-related news report or article from the Internet, share the link here and summarize -- in your own words -- what we learn from these new findings.

There are a couple "game rules" for this assignment.  First, your link and news must be different than any already posted by your classmates, so be sure to read all the comments by the rest of us to this topic before adding your own.  Also please only post one bit of news so that everyone has a fair chance to find and share out a unique source.  Posting more than one link will reduce the points earned.  But posting early can add a point.  Read the syllabus for the details!

Finally, remember that you can post "anonymously" just using your first name or another way to identify yourself.  Click on the "comments", compose your contribution and choose the submission option that works for you.  Also, remember that your post will not appear until I have approved it (which can take a few hours).  My "moderation" of these comments is meant to keep out the spammers.

Thanks!  Dr. B.

Welcome to North Seattle College's GEOL 106 DINOSAURS for Winter 2015

Welcome to the Winter Quarter 2015 GEOL 106 (the Dinosaurs course at North Seattle College). I'm your instructor, Dr. Tom Braziunas, and I am looking forward to working with you this quarter. The dinosaur on the move above was photographed outside the Royal Tyrell Museum in Alberta, Canada. Can you identify it? (You can enlarge the photo by clicking on it.) Some other "museum" dinosaurs are shown below.