DINO-MITE!

Run, do not walk, to see the new paleontology hall at the Houston Museum of Natural Science!



It is a thing of mouth-gaping, tongue-wagging beauty. Even if you never before considered fossils especially beautiful (how could this be?), you will now.  A friend commented that it is like an art museum for fossils.  Bring your camera and set aside plenty of time because there's more to see than a quick, casual walk-through will allow.

In among the beauty is an ugly little footprint I found last year while stumbling around in the 110+ degrees of summer in Seymour, Texas.  (To see it, tilt your head to the left.  It also helps to be really, really hot--and not know that we didn't expect to find this type of footprint in sandstone.)

When I showed this to Dr. Bakker, he began to turn over every sandstone slab he could find, looking for more.

There is also a case in the hall reserved for Fluffster15 (the eryops named in honor of our class--and Fluffy, of course), as soon as he is ready for display.

Dr. Robert Bakker, David Temple, and the rest of the team at the Houston Museum of Natural Science have been working feverishly to bring this amazing gift to Houston's Museum of Natural Science.  Watch as Pete Larson and his team from the Black Hills Institute installs one of the museum's hadrosaurs in its new home.

Karate Kid crane kick