Two summers ago I visited Dinosaur National Monument for the first time. The park was one of the most beautiful places I've seen, but I must admit, I left a little disappointed. Since I am a dinosaur mad child who wanted to see the wall of the famous quarries dotted with hundreds of bones that represent some of the most famous dinosaurs of the Jurassic. But when I arrived, the building that housed the bones had already been closed for three years. The geology of the site has worked on developing and building contractor in small amounts, over and over again, so much so that some parts of the building had changed dramatically and made the whole structure could collapse.
Shortly before my first visit, however, it was announced that the park would receive more than $ 13 million restoring the building and welcome visitors once again. I could not wait for the re-grand opening, especially after I spent over a week and a half for fossils at the monument with the new Natural History Museum of Utah team on the field this summer . I saw the construction of the road careers every day, I was in the area, but I had to wait 4 October 2011, the doors of the new career opened to the public.
At present, the wall of the famous race is only part of what it was. The site was extended to 100 meters on each side of the face of the current race and also extended to bonebed highest hill paleontologist Earl Douglass and his associates abducted during the 20th century. Many fossils are found in parts of today's race can be seen in museums like the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. (These old bones have been recently renovated dinosaur in an exhibition I saw in last year's conference, please.) However, the face is always a beautiful place. Partially articulated member, a sauropod skull at the end of a chain cable, the pieces of different backbones and many isolated bones can be seen around the rock bite. This is how prepared the work was stopped in the fossils, and remain in place as a lesson about life and death of 149 million years ago.
The bones are the main draw, of course, but the new museum also has some impressive extras. More skeleton casts on the lower level to introduce visitors to some of the most charismatic creatures seen scattered over the quarry wall, and a beautiful mural by artists Bob Walters and Tess Kissinger embodies the late Jurassic dinosaurs, like Stegosaurus, Torvosaurus, Dryosaurus and Apatosaurus, plus many small mammals and reptiles that lived with them. Be sure to turn around to look at the mural behind the casting baby Stegosaurus when they leave the building, I do not think I've ever seen an illustration of an Allosaurus chomping down on a baby Stegosaurus before.
Other upgrades and improvements are planned but are not ready when the big revelation. The museum will include virtual screens that explain how for many dinosaurs came to be accumulated in one place, and the bones in the quarry wall that correspond with the dinosaurs. Even without these supplements, however, the wall of new careers is a great testimony of deep time, evolution, and a lost world, we always strive to understand.
For more information related to dinosaurs, visit rareresource.com.
0 comments:
Post a Comment