mattcarrano

We are actually working on the right now. We're scanning the Nation's T. rex in the "Rex Room" exhibit as I write this. I hope that once it's complete we can use the 3D scans to make a model and try out new exhibit poses. And I also hope we can also make it available to you guys out there. Stay tuned!

Ah, I was hoping someone would want to know!

Okay, so rule #1 is that if you find a dinosaur, and you determine it's a new species, you get to name it.

Rule #2 is that if someone figures out two different dinosaurs are actually the same thing, the first-given name is the one you use. (This keeps us from bickering about names too much.)

So, Othniel Marsh's crews discovered a huge Jurassic dinosaur skeleton, pretty complete, at Como Bluff in Wyoming. In 1879 he named it Brontosaurus excelsus, the "thunder lizard."

But a few years earlier, they had found a different, less complete Jurassic dinosaur skeleton at Morrison, Colorado. Marsh named it in 1877 as Apatosaurus ajax, the "deceptive lizard."

Later, when Elmer Riggs was trying to identify a sauropod skeleton he had collected for the Field Museum, he re-studied all these species. He determined that his skeleton belonged to Apatosaurus, and further that this was the same animal as Brontosaurus.

As a result, Brontosaurus is considered a synonym of Apatosaurus, and has been since about 1911. The real mystery to me is how anyone still knows about Brontosaurus!

Yes! Dinosaur fossils are being found all over the US, all the time. We've only found a tiny fraction of the fossils out there (and those fossils are themselves only a tiny fraction of what was alive at the time).

In the US, the best places are out west, where the land is dry (and not covered by vegetation) and the bedrock is the right age (Triassic, Jurassic, or Cretaceous). But dinosaur fossils can be found anywhere there are the right rocks, and right now there have been dinosaurs from about 30 US states.

If you find a dinosaur on your land, it's yours to keep. The US is one of the only countries with lots of dinosaur fossils that still considers them to be legally "minerals," and not objects of national heritage. But of course we hope you decide to donate it to a museum!

Jurassic Park had a huge impact on my life in a sort of indirect way. I was already in grad school when it came out (1993), so it wasn't a factor in my decision to be a paleontologist. But that movie changed the public landscape for dinosaur paleontology. It made dinosaurs interesting to adults and not just children, and helped fuel a major change in museums as a side effect.

One result is that every major museum has now renovated their dinosaur exhibits (we're up next!). Another is that they've all re-hired dinosaur paleontologists. For many decades, most US museums didn't have any dinosaur paleontologists on staff, but now they all do. So I can, in part, thank Jurassic Park for the fact that I have a job.

The answer is yes to both.