I could not assist however recall a sure well-known film opening: guys in hardhats unloading a dinosaur at a brand new park named after a geological time interval…Cretaceous Park or one thing like that. Issues went scarily improper, and film historical past was made.

Right this moment’s expertise did not finish badly although, because the dinosaur in query was a plant-eating Parasaurolophus and it wasn’t a dwelling specimen. It was one of many last additions to the Nice Valley Out of doors Nature Lab on the Nice Valley Museum on the campus of Modesto Junior School.

The exhibit commemorates a little-known reality about our county: it was the location of the primary reported discovery of dinosaurs in California. Again in 1936 17-year-old Al Bennison was exploring Del Puerto Canyon within the Coast Ranges alongside the western a part of Stanislaus County on the lookout for shell fossils when he discovered bones scattered on a slope. He confirmed them to his science trainer who reported them to the paleontologists at U.C. Berkeley. It proved to be the partial stays of a Saurolophus, which was one of many final dinosaurs that ever lived on our planet, one the final teams in existence when the large asteroid hit the planet (or when the volcanoes blew, or no matter else did them in). They lived within the newest a part of the Cretaceous Interval, which is effectively represented by sedimentary rocks in our area. The rocks are marine in origin, which have a tendency to not be good locations to seek for dinosaurs, however typically a carcass would float out to sea, as this one did.

The creatures had been gigantic, on the order of thirty to forty toes lengthy, weighing a number of tons (our mannequin is a 1/2-sized duplicate at 16 toes lengthy). They had been plant-eaters, with enamel well-adapted to grinding twigs and leaves. Whether or not they swam or not has been a subject of debate and debate. Some argue that they’d few different defenses from predators, in order that swimming was crucial to flee from being eaten. Others recommend that they lived in herds that offered safety. California designated a species of Saurolophus, Augustynolophus morrisi, because the state dinosaur in 2017.

So why a Parasaurolophus, and never the Augustynolophus morrisi or different ‘actual’ Saurolophus? That is simple: not one of the entrepreneurs of dinosaur replicas provide any on the market, no less than far as I may discover. We figured {that a} comparable species was higher than none in any respect…

Attempting laborious to not be trampled to loss of life

What an amazing day for geological training in our county. I simply hope the containment construction works! It simply will not do to have wild dinosaurs working round on our campus…