Riding the big wave

From China Daily USA: Riding the big wave
Disney bigger in China than in the United States? That would have once seemed a fantasy appropriate only for one of the entertainment company's more far-fetched movies. But Mike Crawford, general manager of the Shanghai Disney Resort, which will be the biggest theme park ever built in China, believes it could become a reality.

As construction begins on the 3.9 square kilometer site in the Pudong area what is envisaged exceeds what anyone dreamt of when Chinese company OCT opened the country's first theme park in 1989 in Shenzhen.

Shanghai Disney, which is scheduled to open either at the end of 2015 or early 2016, is part of a 29 billion yuan investment ($4.4 billion).

Disney itself is stumping up 43 percent of that - 12.5 billion yuan with the rest being provided by the Shanghai Shendi Group, a 100 percent State-owned joint venture investment holding company. Disney will retain control of the management company, however.

Crawford, who has worked for Disney for 21 years, says Shanghai could be the first of a number of Disney theme parks on the Chinese mainland.

"We think as a company, both in terms of the theme park industry and every other line of business, it (China) represents a tremendous opportunity for us," he says. "We want to make sure we are doing it right and we extend the best possible experience to the guests and then we will assess growth when those other opportunities come."

With theme parks in North America and Europe being hit by the economic downturn, Asia represents a major growth opportunity for the global industry.

The region is the world's fastest growing market with attendances increasing 7 percent in the year up to 2010, according to AECOM, the global consultancy.

Disney already runs the biggest theme park in Asia - Disneyland in Tokyo - that attracted 14.5 million visitors last year.

The main focus is on China, however. Seven of the 15 theme parks with the largest attendance in Asia are in China.

Until now, the Chinese mainland has been served purely by domestic players, although borrowing influences from around the world. Disney is the first foreign operator to be allowed in.

The biggest operator OCT, which opened that first theme park, Splendid China, in the country more than 20 years ago, is the 8th largest theme park chain in the world with its best known brand being Happy Valley. It attracted nearly 20 million visitors last year.

Others include Ocean Park in Hong Kong, which is funded by a trust and run by a Hong Kong government appointed board, and had the seventh largest attendance in 2010 with 5.1 million visitors.

Fantawild Adventure, owned by the Shenzhen Huaqiang Group, currently has five parks with several other smaller projects in the pipeline.

Another major player is the Haichang Group, a conglomerate based in Dalian in Liaoning province in Northeast China.

It has eight theme parks, including the Polar Ocean Worlds at Chengdu, Wuhan and Tianjin.

The potential growth of the market - with ever more Chinese attaining middle class incomes - is what is exciting both Chinese and overseas investors.

Visitor numbers are expected to climb a massive seven-fold from 60 million in 2010 to 423 million by 2030, according to AECOM statistics.

If at some point in the century, the Chinese visit theme parks as much as Americans currently do - approximately 0.7 visits per capita each year - then visitor number could soar to 925 million, more than 15 times today's level of visits.

But the champagne corks were not quite popping at the Noppen China Theme Park Expansion Summit at the somewhat windswept barren location of last year's Shanghai Expo earlier this month.

The Chinese government announced in August it would refuse permission to all new theme park developments larger than 20 hectares or of an investment value of 500 million yuan.

Many, however, were interpreting it as being similar to an existing ban on golf course developments and that the aim was to stop local authorities giving the go-ahead to lavish hotel and property developments masquerading as theme park complexes. If so genuine theme park proposals may still get the green light.

Liu Weigong, deputy general manager of the Changzhou Amusement Park, a 33-hectare theme park in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, was one who was hoping it was business as normal.

The park is owned by the local Wujin district government and since opening in May last year has attracted 1.7 million visitors.

"I still believe the government will support real and serious projects. The measure is to stop the abuse of developers using theme parks as an excuse to do real estate development. I think a lot of developers are worried about the move, however."

Charles Read, managing director of Blooloop, a UK-based website which provides news and information for those working in the theme park industry, believes the government measure is an attempt to restore some sort of order.

"Developers were using theme parks as some sort of Trojan horse to get retail and real estate developments through," he says.

"I think the business needed regulation and what the government is trying to do is to get the industry sorted out. I don't see it as a problem."

How the major international operators will view the government's move remains to be seen.

The industry's big names such as US giants Sea World Adventure Parks and Universal Studios as well as the British operator Merlin Entertainment Group, whose brands include Legoland, Madame Tussauds and Sea Life, are said to be keen to get a slice of the China action.

They have been held back because the government has been keen to protect domestic operators. Negotiations with Disney itself were protracted.

"All the major operators are in Asia now and they want to be in China too, so I think it will only be a matter of time before they come too," adds Read at Blooloop.

"It will be driven by the population seeing what Disney has to offer and they will demand a five-star product. It is inevitable."

What actually is classed as a theme park in China is often different to Western markets.

The term "theme park" means an entertainment experience built around an actual story, a concept that Disney has been so successful with its characters such as Mickey Mouse and Snow White.

But in China, open green public spaces with a few amusement rides often call themselves theme parks.

According to industry experts there are only around 60 in China that should be classed as theme parks proper.

Because of the lack of a theme, Chinese operators often fail to generate revenue from souvenirs and other sales once customers enter their parks.

In the US, some 50 percent of sales are derived from such revenues, whereas in China it is just 20 percent, according to AECOM.

Li Hua, vice-general manager of DinoLand, a dinosaur theme park, also based in Changzhou in Jiangsu province, says his park has managed to push up souvenir sales.

The theme park has developed its own range of souvenirs based on a dinosaur cartoon series on CCTV (China Central Television) called Dinosaur Baby.

"Mickey Mouse has been around almost 100 years and Dinosaur Baby was first screened on CCTV in 2009 but we have still been able to drive up souvenir sales. Our non-ticket price revenue, including food and parking is now nearly 40 percent," he says.

The theme park, which opened in 2000 and extends over 47 hectares, is owned by the Changzhou government and claims it had some 2.5 million visitors last year.

Li, who has visited theme parks around the world, believes Chinese-owned parks are catching up with those in the West.

"There is still a gap between theme parks in the West and those in China but it is becoming narrower," he says.

For foreign operators one of the risks of coming to China is copyright infringement. A number of theme parks around China seem to borrow sets not dissimilar to that of Disney's Magic Kingdom.

Disney itself, however, is unconcerned about weak imitations since it is confident its product and service offering just raises the bar for everyone.

"We are extremely proud of the way we bring stories to life and create environments people can immerse themselves in. We are not concerned that others might duplicate and copy that," says Crawford at Disney.

Certainly, the expansion of the theme park market has presented major opportunities for suppliers to the industry in both Europe and North America.

Swiss Rides, based in Lochriet in Flums, Switzerland, built the world's largest water flume ride for the OCT East theme park in Shenzhen in 2005, which spectacularly runs through a hotel lobby.

Although the company has had to battle against the recent rise in the Swiss franc, China is now one of the company's biggest markets.

"We have already done three or four installations here and China is very much a future market for us," adds Thomas Spiegelberg, CEO of Swiss Rides' parent company BMF.

Brian Paiva, vice-president, business development of Funa International, based in Miami, Florida, which builds installations for both theme parks and cruise ships, says China provides an opportunity to do large-scale projects.

"Markets in the US and Europe are very mature and so there are no longer many substantial projects. Here you still get projects of scale," he says.

Jerry Chan, assistant director of Aquatique Show International, a Strasbourg company, which produces water fountains and effects, also says that China is now a key market.

The company's first project was at a shopping center in Ningbo in Zhejiang province 10 years ago but it later designed a music fountain for the Shanghai Expo and has now branched out into theme parks.

"Theme parks in China is a very exciting market for us. We are already co-operating with Disney in Shanghai but we are still very much at the design stage," says Chan.

A number of Chinese theme park operators are interested in the latest gadgetry and offering something not seen out of China.

Lenny Larsen, director of themed entertainment at Rubicon, an Amman, Jordan-based company that designs theme park attractions, says a number of Chinese operators are looking for something that sets them apart.

He says many are interested in theme park rides that incorporate computer software.

"This is the way attractions are evolving. You can have rides that are different every time you go on them. With the right software one day you might be visiting the Amazon rain forest, another day something entirely different," he says.

Keith James, chief executive officer of Jack Rouse Associates, a leading park designer based in Cinncinatti, says the theme park industry is very expensive to be in whether you are Chinese or foreign.

"You are talking of a $500 million, $700 million or even a $1 billion investment for a solid theme park and that is certainly not a Disney or Universal. You have got to sell hell of a lot of tickets to get a return on that level of investment," he says.

He adds the Chinese industry is still catching up as a result of being a late starter.

"What happened really is they skipped the entire learning curve of the industry. Because it is a theatrical business rooted in the film and theater industry, it is a little tough to learn. If show business was easy no movies would ever fail."

Sondheim and dinosaurs combine for a charity gala

From SFGate.com: Sondheim and dinosaurs combine for a charity gala
What do you get when you combine Stephen Sondheim and dinosaurs? No, not "Jurassic Park: The Musical."

Those lucky enough to attend a gala benefit on Monday night at the American Museum of Natural History will find out. Sondheim, a legendary puzzle maker besides being a cherished songwriter, has created his first ever treasure hunt to be held among the dinosaur bones.

The event — a sort of "Night at the Museum" meets "National Treasure" — is to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Friends In Deed, a nonprofit crisis center based in SoHo that provides emotional and spiritual support for anyone diagnosed with life-threatening physical illnesses.

"I'm just excited to see what he's going to do," says Raul Esparza, the Tony Award-nominated actor and singer who has appeared in such Sondheim musicals as "Sunday in the Park With George" and "Company."

Esparza will be one of several hundred guests split into teams who then follow Sondheim's clues as they wander the museum's two massive dinosaur halls, where the T-rex stands. Each team will get a different first clue to minimize crowding.

"I expect the clues to be — maybe not always, but sometimes — very cryptic," says actor Anthony Rapp, Friends In Deed board member and "Rent" original cast member. "But he probably has to scale the difficulty to some degree because it can't take all night."

Then, after a winner emerges, he and Barbara Cook will sing for the rest of the guests during a sit-down dinner in the museum's planetarium. Several hundred attendees have signed up, including Bravo's Andy Cohen, director-writer Nora Ephron and news anchor Diane Sawyer.

Seats to the event, called "A Little Jurassic Treasure Hunt" and hosted by Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, cost $1,500. The goal is to have some 300 guests and the organization says there are still tickets available.

"We are a relatively small organization in many ways but it just seemed important to do something pretty special for the 20th anniversary," says Rapp, who was aided by the group when his mother was ill.

As his intricate lyrics suggest, 81-year-old Sondheim is a crossword puzzle fan and word game aficionado who in the past has sent clumps of friends on private scavenger hunts across the city and his home in Connecticut. He and actor Tony Perkins hosted their first Halloween hunt in 1968.

"I thought that was maybe the coolest thing I'd ever heard: New Yorkers following a Stephen Sondheim puzzle around. So I can't believe that he agreed to create another one," says Esparza.

Friends In Deed was co-founded in 1991 by film director and producer Mike Nichols and actress Cynthia O'Neal, who serves as its president. Its free programs help those who are battling AIDS, cancer and other diseases or dealing with bereavement, as well as family, friends and caregivers of those who are ailing.

"It was about AIDS when Friends In Deed was founded, but the reason I think so many people were drawn to the organization is really because it's about life. It's about dealing with very difficult things like grief and death and illness, but not dying while you're still alive."

Sondheim, who has been associated with Friends In Deed for several years, offered to lend his puzzle skills for the 20th anniversary celebration over dinner last spring with O'Neal, an old friend.

"Because I don't like to ask things of my friends, I had never asked Steve if he would do it, but it was certainly a thought that I harbored," says O'Neal, who once participated in a Sondheim treasure hunt. "I don't know exactly how, but the subject came up and he said, `You know, I'd love to do one for you.'"

O'Neal has no idea what Sondheim is planning and that's fine by her. "There are those who do, but I don't because I want to do it," she says. "I don't know what's going on in that brilliant little mind."

Though he's never been on a Sondheim-designed treasure hunt, Esparza has heard stories about previous ones. In one, contestants showed up at a brownstone and were served tea and cake. A clue appeared at the bottom of the tea cup. It read: "You can't have your cake and eat it, too."

It turned out that when all the team's cake slices were rearranged, the icing would reveal a map of the next rendezvous. If the cake pieces had been devoured before the clue was discovered, though, the team was doomed.

For Esparza, there's a lesson there that he intends to remember at the gala: "Don't eat anything until you're told you absolutely can."

Memphis, Tennessee: Dinosaurs coming to Memphis Zoo

From Raliegh-Frayser.wmctv.com: Dinosaurs coming to Memphis Zoo
This spring the Memphis Zoo opens an all new exhibit featuring Dinosaurs.

The exhibit will have 15 animatronic creatures.

This attraction will be open March 10 through July 8, 2012.

The Memphis Zoo is partnering with a company that has done this exhibit around the country from San Diego to St. Louis.

The Zoo president says this may sound familiar, but technology is taking the exhibit to a whole new level.

"Many people may remember the dinosaur exhibit the Memphis Zoo had in the 90s," said Dr. Chuck Brady, Memphis Zoo President and CEO. "The new exhibit will be outdoors, and the dinosaurs themselves will be much more advanced than what we featured before."

Different from many other dinosaur exhibits, these utilize a hydraulic motion system, making them lower maintenance, sustainable outdoors and their movements more life-like.

"Dinosaurs" will feature a total of 15 different dinosaurs in a special exhibit area, positioned west of the current waterfowl exhibit. This area will include a jungle atmosphere, which simulates dinosaurs in their pre-historic habitat, a dinosaur video and an archaeological dig for children to learn how these creatures were discovered.

This exhibit also opens the door to a new conservation message for children of all ages. The Zoo's Education Department will create field trip and class options that give students a hands-on lesson about these creatures and how important it is to preserve the species we have today so they aren't lost to extinction.

Admission to "Dinosaurs" will be $3 for Memphis Zoo members and $4 for nonmembers.

A look behind the making of "Terra Nova" dinosaurs

From Reuters: A look behind the making of "Terra Nova" dinosaurs

(Reuters) - Everybody knows what dinosaurs look and sound like. After all, who hasn't seen the "Jurassic Park" movies.

So what if your boss is Steven Spielberg -- the guy who created that movie and is chiefly responsible for those dinosaurs? And he says that for his new TV show, "Terra Nova," make me dinosaurs but don't make them look or sound like "Jurassic Park" dinosaurs?

"You can see the dilemma," deadpanned Michael Graham, the supervising sound designer for Spielberg's new Fox series, "Terra Nova," which debuted on TV earlier this week.

"Everybody who's seen that movie knows -- that's what they sound like! That is the vocabulary of dinosaurs," Graham said.

In "Terra Nova," humans are sent back in time to escape the overcrowded and polluted future of 2149. And they go WAY back to prehistoric times with when massive animals with scaly skin, sharp teeth and names that end with "-aurus" ruled Earth.

The show drew a solid audience of 9.7 million viewers on its debut night last Monday, and reviews were mostly positive. The New York Times said the story was "lavishly produced by television standards, at a level of visual and technical sophistication" befitting its two years from script to screen.

The dinos of "Terra Nova" don't look or sound like their theatrical predecessors, and for good reason. Jack Horner, the show's paleontology expert who worked with Spielberg on "Jurassic Park" made sure of it.

"Jack set our show in the Cretaceous Period, 85 million years ago," explains visual effects supervisor Kevin Blank. "That's a period where the fossil record is the least defined. They only know about 10 percent of what existed at that time."

So Blank and his team were able to give audiences dinos that audiences may have heard of, like the menacing Carnotaurus and the gentle, long-necked Brachiosaurus, as well as some we probably haven't.

NEW DINOS, LOUD ROARS

The Slasher Tails in the premiere episode, for instance, never existed but they might as well have, says executive producer Brannon Braga. "We needed a big, climactic dinosaur, so I thought, 'What's one that didn't exist but could have existed?' Then we just go for the Jack Horner seal of approval, in terms of appearance and behavior. We do that for any animal we create."

Creating the behavior of dinos is "the fun part" for the writers. "You can't just throw a dinosaur up on screen, especially if it's one you're making up," says Braga. "They have to have specific behaviors. Maybe they travel in packs, like the Slashers do. And maybe one scouts the area, and when it finds its prey, calls for others. First there are two Slashers ... and then there are a dozen others."

But it is most important that even the made-up dinosaurs look real to audiences. "If a six-year-old who loves and studies dinosaurs spots something that doesn't look right, they'll cry 'Fake!' And Jack says he gets those letters all the time," said Blank.

And that all leaves one critical question. How do the special effects wizards create the sound of a dinosaur?

They're a mixture of sounds, it turns out, but one element is common, they all roar.

"You can use a bear, a lion, a cougar, and we manipulate them so that they fit the size of the creature," said Graham.

For the Carnotaurus, Graham and his team sought to come up with a new terrifying sound. "That was a challenge. The producers definitely didn't want to hear the T. Rex sound. So we had to create a new, intimidating dinosaur sound."

Rick Steele, Graham's chief dino sound designer, injected the sound of a bird -- a condor, in this case -- into the Carno. "You hear it at the tail end when they attack," he explains.

"The hardest part," Steele said, "is to try and create a personality," making the dino vocalizations match the expressions the animators put on their faces.

"Remember, these aren't monsters - they're characters."

Bones From The Badlands Belong To New Dinosaur

From NPR: Bones From The Badlands Belong To New Dinosaur

Researchers made quite a find this week in Utah: a new species of raptor dinosaur. The ancient creature, a meat-eater, was small and fast, with talon-like toes.

"These animals were incredibly fast, incredibly intelligent and some of them wielded very significant claws and sharp teeth," Dr. Lindsay Zanno of the New University of Wisconsin tells NPR's Scott Simon. Zanno led the dig team that made the discovery.

Zanno named the species Talos Sampsoni after her friend and colleague, Dr. Scott Sampson, also known as "Dr. Scott" on the television series, Dinosaur Train. Talos Sampsoni was feathered and about 5-feet long and about 2-and-a-half feet at the hips, Zanno says. "Definitely an overgrown vicious Labrador retriever-sized animal," she says.

Michael Knell, a graduate student at Montana State University, actually made the discovery. Knell had been hunting the Badlands in Southern Utah for fossilized turtles. "He turned the corner and found one of the most amazing raptor-dinosaur specimens we have from the late Cretaceous in North America," Zanno says.

The bones were intact and, in the ground, looked the way they would have in life — a discovery, she says, that is fairly rare in North America.

"Most dinosaur specimens that we have have been laying out on the surface for a long time and the bones have become scattered," Zanno says.

The discovery is significant not because it reveals anything new about the biology of these animals, Zanno says, but rather because it's a piece of the puzzle researchers had speculated about but never confirmed. Zanno says that footprint evidence suggested that the specialized talon on the foot of the raptor dinosaur wasn't used for walking and was regularly put in harm's way. But this kind of evidence is ambiguous.

"Finding Talos was something we were all waiting for and was confirmation we'd been speculating about for a long time," she says.

The dinosaur will soon go on display at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City.

As for Knell? "He's still plugging away at his degree and hopefully getting some good fanfare out of his important discovery," Zanno says.

New dinosaur species found in Utah

From Tothecenter.com: New dinosaur species found in Utah
A new species of dinosaur, Talos sampsoni, related to the Velociraptor, has been discovered in Utah.

Lindsay Zanno, an author of a study on the new dinosaur, told Huffington Post, “Finding a decent specimen of this type of dinosaur in North America is like a lightning strike. It’s a random event of thrilling proportions.”

The unearthed dinosaur is closely related to birds. It even had feathers and three talons on each foot. Zanno and others believe the talons were used as weapons. This conclusion is formed from the discovery of an injured talon, suggesting that the Talos sampsoni could have been aggressive.

In a statement to the Huffington Post, Zanno says, “[The injury] tells us that the dinosaur was doing something dangerous, something high risk, that could cause that kind of injury. It was either used to hunt prey, or it was used in combat with other members of the species, which is something other modern birds do.”

Fox News reports that the dinosaur is 75-million-years-old and is estimated to be about six feet tall, weighing about 83 pounds. Also according to Fox News, the new species was found in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah. There have been at least 15 new species of dinosaur found in this area.

Fossil hunter Mary Anning celebrated in Lyme Regis

From BBC News: Fossil hunter Mary Anning celebrated in Lyme Regis

It is 200 years since a young girl made a landmark discovery in Dorset.

In 1811, Lyme Regis fossil hunter Mary Anning - aged just 12 - and her older brother Joseph unearthed the 2m (6.5ft) long skull of an ichthyosaur.

Anning spent a year extracting the dinosaur fossil from 205 million-year-old Blue Lias cliffs on the beach.

It remains one of the most famous geological finds on the Jurassic Coast, yet Anning was never credited as a scientist.


The ichthyosaur fossil is on display in Lyme Regis until the end of September Her life is being celebrated on 24 September during Mary Anning Day: 200 Years Of Discovery at Lyme Regis Museum.

But perhaps her most remarkable legacy is that her pioneering work still motivates many of today's experts.

Geologist Paddy Howe, from Lyme Regis, said: "Mary Anning had a huge amount of determination and is a great inspiration to me.

"To make the discoveries she did she must have been out in some terrible storms, and after landslides when the cliffs had been disturbed."

Born in 1799, Mary Anning, who is thought to have inspired the tongue-twister "She sells sea shells", was a self educated, working class woman from the "poor side" of town.

Her other discoveries included fossilised dinosaur faeces known as coprolites.

However, her sex and social class, in a society dominated by wealthy men, prevented her from fully participating in the scientific community of early 19th Century Britain.

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Mary Goodwin, curator of Lyme Regis Museum which is built on the site of Anning's birthplace, said: "You were nothing in those days until you had your name published on a scientific paper."

A tool thought to have been used to extract fossils from the cliffs by Anning is housed at the museum, along with her notebook from the 1830s.

The book is filled with quotes and poems that were important to her.

Ms Goodwin said: "The book shines a light on her as a person, as opposed to the fossils she discovered.

"Although she never married or had children, the book suggests she had a romantic side."

American novelist Tracy Chevalier, who has written a fictional book based on facts about Anning, said: "There's evidence to suggest Mary had a romantic relationship that ended badly, but no one knows with whom.


One of Anning's discoveries was fossilised dinosaur faeces "Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas James Birch organised an auction of specimens he had purchased from the Anning family in 1820 which raised £400.

"That was an awful lot of money in those days and he donated it back to the Anning family.

"I think that was a huge romantic gesture."

Anning also had a firm friendship with fossil collector Elizabeth Philpot.

Ms Chevalier said: "Elizabeth was a middle class woman and for the pair to be friends was most unusual.

"In other circumstances Mary would most likely have been a servant to Elizabeth, not a friend."

Anning survived a lightning strike as a baby which killed three other people.

Ms Chevalier said: "She was a sickly baby but became a lively and intelligent child and adult, which many people attributed to the lightning strike.

"She was an incredible woman."

Anning died of breast cancer in 1847, aged 47.

Pennsylvania: Dorney Park Discloses Plan For Dinosaur Park

From South Whitehall Patch: Dorney Park Discloses Plan For Dinosaur Park

Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom is planning to step back into the Jurassic Age, literally, with the addition of a different type of attraction for the 2012 season: Dinosaurs Alive!

The attraction will include a series of stationary and automated dinosaur figures -- some 37 in all.

Most of the prehistoric figures will be less than 16 feet in height, but the plan also includes two 35- to 40-foot dinosaurs. They will be viewed by patrons traveling through a themed walking path approximately 2,100 feet long in a 3.3-acre wooded area behind and to the west of Steel Force.

The plan was disclosed Wednesday at a meeting of the South Whitehall commissioners, who earlier in the evening approved amendments to the township’s zoning ordinance that standardized zoning throughout the park. The amendment allows parent company Cedar Fair to replace amusements and add additional rides in excess of 85 feet in height without having to get approval from the township.

The commissioners also approved an amendment giving the park a go-ahead to expand its current parking area into a 6.75-acre parcel of land west of Lincoln Avenue. The plot was purchased from Lehigh County earlier this year for $2.75 million.

“The area where Dinosaurs Alive! is planned lends itself very well to this type of attraction,” said Jason McClure, vice president and general manager of Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom.

“It’s a different kind of attraction for us,” he said. “Currently, schools don’t allow students to attend an amusement park on a school day unless there’s some educational value to the trip. With its educational component, Dinosaurs Alive! will give us a whole new dimension. It will give us another little niche as an attraction to schools and camps.”

Plans are to begin construction on the walkway this fall, with completion of the attraction before the park's re-opening next spring.

Kings Island in Ohio, which is also owned by Dorney's parent company Cedar Fair, is home to a Dinosaurs Alive! park. It features 60 life-sized dinosaurs in a 12.5-acre forest setting, according to its website.

Maryland: Heavy rains yield massive fossil

From News.24: Heavy rains yield massive fossil

Laurel - Scientists say they have excavated Maryland's largest dinosaur fossil find in five years, a football-sized bone weighing about 1.2kg.

Steve Jabo, a Smithsonian fossil expert, excavated the bone on Wednesday, but it's too early to say what kind of dinosaur it belonged to.

The Baltimore Sun reports the fossil was poking from the clay on September 10 at Maryland's Dinosaur Park.

Amateur palaeontologist David Hacker spotted it while scouring the site for fossils exposed by heavy rains from remnants of recent Tropical Storm Lee.

Jabo said the fossil could be part of a leg bone of a plant-eating sauropod.

Dinosaur Park, in Prince George's County, has been yielding fossils for decades and scientists and amateur sleuths deliver any finds there to the Smithsonian Institution.

TV Series - Dinosaur Train

This is a kid's show which is on PBS, which has a group of kid dinosaurs who go about on a train to various parts of the world meeting other dinosaurs.

Today, Paleontologist Scott (I *think* that's the character's name) stated definitely that birds are dinosaurs.

That's a theory - has not been proven, and I don't really think that it should be stated definitely.

(This is not the same as evolution. Evolution is a theory, yes, but it's got a vast weight of fact and evidence behind it. Evolution is a fact, it's the process behind it that is in dispute.)

Booklist: Reading Between The Bones

Reading Between the Bones: The Pioneers of Dinosaur Paleontology, by Susan Clinton. Franklin Watts. 1997.

A book written for teens, but suitable for adults as an introduction to the subject.

Description
You are given a fossil bone belonging to an animal many millions of years old. Now describe what this creature looked like, how it lived, and how it died.

Sound impossible? Not to a paleontologist. The scientists profiled in this book rely on bones to reveal clues about the giant animals that roamed the earth millions of years ago. They respect fossils as the foundation of paleontology.

Nevertheless, the bones do not guarantee understanding. Though the bones literally make up the skeleton of our knowledge of dinosaurs, just looking at the bones isn't enough. The scientists in this book have read between and around the bones to understand better how long-extinct creatures walked, ate, raised young, and eventually died.

The story begins with Georges Cuvier, who prided himself on being able to describe an entire animal from a single bone. When someone presented him with an especially unusual bone in 1824, he announced that it belonged to a lizard the size of a whale. He had described - for the first time ever - a dinosaur.

Many others followed Cuvier's lead, including Gideon Mantell, who coined the phrase "the Age of Reptiles" and O.C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, who raced each other to find the remains of bigger and bigger dinosaurs in the American West.

In a lively style, author Susan Clinton introduces us to other major players in this fascinating field, bringing us all the way to the present. Inn highlighting the lives of the pioneers of dinosaur paleontology, she not only explains the lives the scientists, but also the life of the science.

Table of Contents
1. "A Lizard the Size of a Whale": Georges Cuvier and the Discovery of Extinction
2. "In the Midst of Wondeers": Gideon Mantell and the Age of Reptiles
3. "Bones for the Millions": O. C. Marsh vs Edward Drinker Cope in the GReat Dinosaur Rush
4. "Bigger and Better Eggs": Roy Chapman Andrews, Walter GRanger and the Fossil Fields of Mongolia
5. "A New Theory, A Heresy": Robert Bakker and the Dinosaur Success Story
6. "Embryos in the Egg and Newborns in their Nests": John Horner and the "Good Mother Dinosaur"

A Note on the Geologic Time Scale
Selected Bibliography
Internet Resources
Index

Don Lessem: Dinosaur Man

From Delaare County News Netwrok: Don Lessem: Dinosaur Man

Ask Don Lessem what’s new and he’ll most likely tell you what’s old -- millions of years old.

Better known as “Dino Don,” Lessem is today’s leading presenter of dinosaur science. A free lance paleontologist and a resident of Middletown for the past nine years, he’s been the host and author of NOVA and Discovery Channel films. He’s written 50 books for children, most of them about dinosaurs, and has authored an encyclopedia for National Geographic. In addition, he’s the well-known dinosaur columnist for Highlights Magazine, the world’s most popular children’s magazine.

“Dinosaurs are a way of getting kids interested in science,” said Lessem, whose interests actually extend beyond dinosaurs to all things related to science, living or not. But it’s his vast knowledge of the incredible creatures that roamed the earth millions of years ago that has made him a dinosaur expert.

Lessem, 59, recalled that his earliest encounter with the prehistoric world was when he stood next to, and was dwarfed by, a model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He was four years old.

A native New Yorker, Lessem attended Brandeis University near Boston, and later the University of Massachusetts. He began his dinosaur studies as a Knight Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was while working as a newspaper reporter for the Boston Globe on a science fellowship that he was assigned to write about a dinosaur dig out west. That experience led to rekindling the interest in dinosaurs he had as a child.

He embarked on dinosaur research as a participant in the 1988 China-Canada Expedition to Inner Mongolia. Since then, he’s traveled the world -- from Mongolia and China to Argentina and the Arctic -- in search of dinosaurs. He’s one of only about 40 other people in the world who dig for dinosaurs. Among his experiences was supervising the excavation and reconstruction of the world’s largest meat-eating dinosaur, Giganotosaurus, as well as the largest of any dinosaur, Argentinosaurus.

When he’s not unearthing dinosaur bones or working on a dinosaur-related project, Lessem is surrounded at home by a multitude of majestic prehistoric creatures. Dinosaurs are scattered over his three-acre property, on the porch and throughout the large, historic 1784 farmhouse where he lives. For example, dinosaurs decorate his powder room, which features fossils embedded in a floor of Jurassic-era limestone. He calls the room “The World’s Smallest Dinosaur Museum.”

Lessem shares his dinosaur know-how not only through the written word but also through educational displays created by his company, Dinodon, Inc. His dinosaurs can be seen in museums around the world. Among his projects was a traveling natural history exhibit called The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. It toured 30 North American cities in three editions, was viewed by more than three million people, and raised almost $2 million for dinosaur research. Lessem is the creator and chief funder of the Dinosaur Society and Jurassic Foundation, the world’s two largest charities for dinosaur research.

Lessem also served as consultant to “Jurassic Park” and Disney dinosaur films. When the filming for “Jurassic Park” ended, he was given all the dinosaur models and props from the movie set. Those models and much more can be viewed locally by the public when a unique attraction called the Dinosaurium opens at Granite Run Mall in early November.

The first-of-its-kind museum at the mall is being created in 65,000 square feet of leased space near Granite Run’s first floor center court. Dubbed by Lessem as “the Greatest Show Unearthed,” the Dinosaurium will showcase a dozen different dinosaurs, as well as dinosaur teeth, eggs and skeletons up to 30-feet long.

Through informative signs and hands-on activities geared to a wide range of ages, museum-goers will learn a lot about the amazing creatures who lived during the world’s earliest beginning. Included will be lesser known dinosaurs, such as those discovered in China. Movies on dinosaurs will be shown, and there will be a dig pit for kids to search for a piece of the ancient past. Enhancing the museum will be dramatic lighting and sound effects. And, of course, there will be a dinosaur museum store. The Dinosaurium will be open from 11 to 7, Monday through Saturday, and 10 to 6, Sunday. Timed tickets will be sold.

Lessem pointed out that a local school will be spotlighted each week and $1 of every ticket sold that week will be donated to the school. He said he hopes to offer workshops for teachers as an educational tool.

“I’ve always wanted to do this. I had the idea 15 years ago, but I couldn’t find a mall to do it when I lived in Massachusetts. Granite Run Mall has been incredibly supportive. It’s been a big effort on their part,” said Lessem.

“We’re very excited to have this one-of-a-kind exhibit in the mall. Don’s a good partner with the mall and we look forward to a long relationship together,”

Granite Run Mall Marketing Director Aubrey Proud

Planet Dinosaur

From The End of the Pier show Blog, UK: The End Of The Pier Show
While browsing the BBC website for something else just now (OK, OK, I wanted to know when Torchwood was on, I have this thing for stroppy leather-clad Welsh women with guns) I discovered the first episode of Planet Dinosaur lurking ominously on the iPlayer, so, in the interests of science entertainment science I watched it.

Those of a certain age might recall that I was critical of the BBC’s last major dinosaur series, Walking with Dinosaurs, now (Heavens to Betsy!!) more than a decade old. The main reason was its presentation, as a straight-ahead wildlife documentary. This was good for drama, but the viewer had no way of knowing which elements of the scene were known to be true; which were based on inference; and which were necessarily speculative.

I remember being quizzed by a friend at the time who’d been watching the series with his offspring. “But Dad,” quoth the offspring, “how do they know this?” “I don’t know,” the Dad replied, making a mental note to ask me. I was, after all, a palaeontologist, and a scientist, and therefore Keeper of the Arcane Secrets. I felt sorry to have to disappoint him. “They don’t know this,” I was forced to say, “a lot of it is just guesswork.” Presenting statements of varying degrees of truth on the same level of … er … verisimilitude was, and still is, a disservice to science. The public will be rightly suspicious and will be less inclined to believe anything a scientist says in future, whether the information is reliable or not.

So what of Planet Dinosaur? This series takes advantage of a decade of stunning dinosaur discoveries, and many of the stars of the show will be new to most people. The first episode (of six) concentrates on the Late Cretaceous of North Africa, and the lives of two large predators, Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus. The first has been known since 1912, but the recent discovery of more remains, and the remains of similar dinosaurs in other parts of the world, have painted a picture of currently The Largest Predator Known To Have Walked The Earth(TM). The narration by John Hurt is much better than Kenneth Branagh’s on Walking With Dinosaurs, but these fine actors both have to cope with a script that focuses on a right old attack of the dooms, with lashings of death, killing, death, copious loss of blood, doom, killing, death, nasty long pointy teeth, killing, death, killing and more killing. Where were the dinosaurs that liked to stay home of an evening with their knitting, a mug of Ovaltine and perhaps a nice Catherine Cookson novel from the library? There will perhaps be a respite next week, which promises a rash of small feathered dinosaurs such as Microraptor and Epidexipteryx. We’ll see.

Walking With Dinosaurs used a mixture of CGI and animatronics in real landscapes. Planet Dinosaur is completely computer generated, and this allows for a certain stylistic licence. The animation is fine, as far as one can tell, if not eye-popping, but the completely-CGI presentation allows for some abrupt shifts of camera angle, making quite sure that we are concentrating on the action, and heightening the drama. As such, I ‘read’ the episode less as a straight documentary than as animé, as if it had been adapted from a graphic novel. The experience of watching Planet Dinosaur reminded me of – of all things – the movie 300, about the Battle of Thermopylae. I enjoyed the film, and its stylistic conventions, without knowing – at the time – that it had been an adaptation of a graphic novel.

Does Planet Dinosaur ramp up style at the expense of substance? Happily, the answer is no. Walking With Dinosaurs had a special ‘Making Of’ feature that answered some of the criticisms that people like me (I was not alone) had raised, but Planet Dinosaur has another strategy. Every so often it freezes the action with a kind of animated sidebar presenting actual evidence for some of the action. For example, head-to-head battles between dinosaurs over prey carcasses, or territory, are intercut with quick graphics showing actual fossil evidence for such things. The graphics are rather like animated footnotes. They’re a clean and efficient way of presenting the evidence and don’t interrupt the action unduly, for all that they remind one of the editorial asides in the TV version of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Mrs Crox (who saw the program when it originally aired, a few days ago) summed it up very well – it looks like an animated Dorling Kindersley book of dinosaurs.

We await the next episodes with interest.

How do you build a dinosaur?

From BBC Nature: How do you build a dinosaur?
We all think that we know what dinosaurs look like, but no human has actually seen one. But recent palaeontological breakthroughs mean that scientists are now able to create the most accurate reproductions ever seen.

A full Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton has never been found, so how do we know what they looked like?

In 1854, the world's first dinosaur exhibition opened in Crystal Palace, South London. But by the end of the 19th Century the show had lost credibility, as scientific discoveries superseded these early impressions of dinosaurs.

Now the world's leading dinosaur scientists are working on a groundbreaking exhibition in Los Angeles, California, which aims to be the most scientifically accurate representation of dinosaurs so far.

Luis Chiappe, director of LA's Museum of Natural History, says they aim to show how "we translate the evidence that we find in the field into scientific knowledge".

The centrepiece of the exhibit will be a "growth series" of three T. rex skeletons, and it will also feature a model of a baby T. rex.

To get both models and skeletons exactly right, a huge amount of science goes into each exhibit.

The palaeontologists' starting point remains the fossilised bones uncovered on digs around the world, but it's not always fresh excavations that yield new information.

Darren Naish, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in Oxford, looks for new dinosaurs in the back rooms of museums.

"You don't necessarily have to go out in the field and look for dinosaurs, you can just rummage through museum drawers and you will find something new," he says.

He and a colleague only recently found a new species tucked away in storage, and he says there are a huge number of specimens which could become new discoveries.

"We're in a golden age of dinosaur discovery, there's about 50 new species of dinosaurs named every year," he says, adding that "about 90% of all named dinosaurs have been named since about 1990".

The next step is to work out exactly what the unearthed fossils are. It can take years to clean off sediment from an entire skeleton.

Once the skeleton is ready, it needs to be pieced together and hung true to life.

Paul Zawisha is in charge of creating a custom-made steel frame for the T. rex, which needs to be strong enough to support the enormous weight of the fossils.

He says: "Most of the bones are real which makes them extremely heavy.

"We're estimating that the total weight of the bones is a little over a tonne.

"The femurs probably are a good 200-250lbs (90-115kg) apiece, we have to set those in place with special rigging devices.

"Heaven forbid one of them falls because it would take quite a bit of time to get those back together."

Paul is in charge of putting together the lead T. rex in the exhibition - known as "Thomas".

Rebuilding a skeleton takes many contractors months Thomas is one of the best T. rex specimens discovered, but is still only 70% complete. His missing bones will be made by Paul's team, based on those belonging to over 30 other partial T. rex that have been found.

The steel frame will be a work of art in itself, millimetre perfect, and subtle enough not to draw attention away from the dinosaur.

The pose in which the dinosaur is hung, while being true to science, will also involve a degree of artistic interpretation, to really bring the exhibit to life.

"We might change the toes just a little bit to give this thing a sneaking feeling, or a pausing feeling. But it's very, very subtle," says Paul.

"You might move one toe just one inch in one direction, and that changes how you visualise this whole thing," he says.

Most experts now believe that although many dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, a few survived and evolved into modern birds.

"What it means is that because dinosaurs have living descendants, dinosaurs are not extinct, they did not become extinct at the end of the Mesozoic era," explains Luis.

"You know you have 10,000 living species of birds that are providing you an enormous amount of information that you can use to understand the biology."

One of the world's leading experts on dinosaur movement, Dr John Hutchinson is being consulted by Luis to make sure the T. rexes reflect the latest theories on musculature and physiology.

By comparing bird anatomy with dinosaur anatomy, estimating the muscle sizes of extinct animals, and inputting them into computer models, Dr Hutchinson is able to get an insight into how dinosaurs actually moved.

Dr Hutchinson says: "We've found using our computer models that a human sprinter which can do 25 miles an hour (40km/h) or a little faster would probably be pretty well matched for a muscular Tyrannosaurus.

"An average human who can run about 15 miles an hour would probably be a pretty good match for a skinnier version of a T. rex."

Also being constructed for the exhibition for the first time is a model of a tiny, chicken-sized dinosaur called Fruitadens, the smallest dinosaur to be found in North America.

Fossils and imaging have enabled scientists to reproduce it faithfully, but one mystery remains: its colour.

How do we know what colour dinosaurs should be?

Doyle Trankina, one of Luis's artists who is working on the Fruitadens model, says: "If you push things too far, you go with polka dots, purple and pink, your audience simply won't believe it.

"If you draw upon the examples of living animals, we can actually gain a lot just by looking at crocodile skin, colouration, maybe some lizards and fish even, it will remain believable."

But there is another way. Prof Mike Benton recently came across the remains of a dinosaur that were so exquisitely well-preserved that feathers, as well as bones, had fossilised.

When scanned with an electron microscope which magnifies objects 9,000 times, the secrets of their pigmentation were able to be unlocked.

By comparing their structure to living feathers, colours could be identified - ginger, black, dark brown or grey.

It's a finding that has helped scientists create even more accurate portrayals of dinosaurs.

"Who on earth would have thought a dinosaur is close to a bird? But there we are. You know it's kind of proved in the skeletons, and now if you like, proved in the anatomy of the feathers," says Prof Benton.

Palaeontology is a constantly developing field, where new discoveries are changing the game all the time.

And that is a burden Luis is well aware of: "It is our responsibility to make sure that people understand that things are not written in stone, and our scientific conclusions change as we gather more evidence."

Newfound Raptor Dinosaur Had 'Switchblade' Killing Claws

From Fox News: Newfound Raptor Dinosaur Had 'Switchblade' Killing Claws

Battle damage linked to the fearsome curving talon of a newly discovered dinosaur relative of Velociraptor is shedding light on how it was used as a weapon, scientists find.

This research also adds to the mysterious complexity seen in the lost continent where this fossil was found, researchers added.

The newfound 75-million-year-old dinosaur is a feathered raptor named Talos sampsoni — "Talos" in homage to a winged bronze giant in Greek mythology that could run at lightning speed and that succumbed to a wound to his ankle, "sampsoni" in honor of Scott Sampson of the PBS series "Dinosaur Train," and a research curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History.

The raptor dinosaurs, made famous by the book and film "Jurassic Park," all possessed unusually large, sickle-like claws on the second toes of each foot, which they held off the ground like folded switchblades.

A famous discovery made in Mongolia 30 years ago seemingly of a Velociraptor locked in mortal combat with prey — fossils dubbed the "fighting dinosaurs" — suggested these talons were used as weapons. Now the injured claw of Talos sheds even more light on how they lived with these weapons. [See images of new raptor dinosaur]

Little scrapper

Talos was a type of troodontid, a group of dinosaurs whose anatomy suggests they were closely related to birds. [See Avian Ancestors: Dinosaurs That Learned to Fly]

Estimated to have been about 6 feet (2 meters) long and weigh about 83 pounds (38 kilograms), Talos was neither the smallest nor largest troodontid. For instance, Talos was much larger than tiny troondontids such as Anchiornis, which may have been as small as 100 grams, while it was smaller and more slender than its approximately 8-foot-long cousin Troodon, after which this group of dinosaurs is named. "Talos was fleet-footed and lightly built," said researcher Lindsay Zanno, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. "This little guy was a scrapper." (Zanno is also a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.)

The researchers discovered the specimen in the 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. The area is one of the last pristine dinosaur graveyards in the United States, with at least 15 new dinosaur species discovered there in just the past decade, including the turkey-like Hagryphus giganteus, horned dinosaurs Kosmoceratops and Utahceratops, duck-billed dinosaurs, including Gryposaurus monumentensis, two new tyrannosaurs and a number of armored dinosaurs known as ankylosaurs.

"Finding a decent specimen of this type of dinosaur in North America is like a lighting strike," Zanno said, referring to the fact that troodontids are known nearly exclusively from Asia. "It's a random event of thrilling proportions."

Researcher Michael Knell also voiced his excitement: "I was surprised when I learned that I had found a new dinosaur," said Knell, a doctoral student at Montana State University. "It is a rare discovery, and I feel very lucky to be part of the exciting research happening here in the monument." He stumbled across the remains of Talos while exploring the area for fossil turtles as part of his doctoral research.

Talon trauma

After the researchers began studying the fossil, they discovered what appeared to be signs of trauma to its second toe on its left foot, the one that would have bore an enlarged hook-like claw.

"When we realized we had evidence of an injury, the excitement was palpable," Zanno said. "An injured specimen has a story to tell."

Evidence of injury can shed light on how a body part was used, the researchers explained. An injury to the foot of a raptor dinosaur, for example, can yield new details about the potential function of its toes and claws.

"Normally we think that the most pristine fossils we can find perhaps yield the most important information, but in fact sometimes it's the beat-up, damaged, injured specimens that can give you clues about the biology of an extinct animal you wouldn't have otherwise," Zanno told LiveScience. [Image Gallery: Dinosaur Fossils]

Using a high-resolution micro-CT scanner, Zanno and her colleagues saw the injury was restricted to the toe with the enlarged claw — it had either been fractured or bitten and then suffered from a localized infection.

"People have speculated that the talon on the foot of raptor dinosaurs was used to capture prey, fight with other members of the same species, or defend the animal against attack," Zanno said. "Our interpretation supports the idea that these animals regularly put this toe in harm's way."

Intriguingly, the injured toe showed signs of the kind of changes in bone that occur over many weeks to months, suggesting that Talos lived with a serious injury to its foot for a long time.

"Whatever it typically did with the enlarged talon on the left foot, whether that be acquire prey or interact with other members of the species, it must have been capable of doing so fairly well with the one on the right foot," said researcher Patrick O'Connor at Ohio University.

Footprints made by raptors closely related to Talos suggest they all held the switchblade talon off the ground when walking.

"Our data support the idea that the talon of raptor dinosaurs was not used for purposes as mundane as walking," Zanno said. "It was an instrument meant for inflicting damage."

Talos meals

It remains uncertain what Talos might have eaten. "Many are still debating over what its relatives ate," Zanno said. "My recent research suggests it was probably either a carnivore or an omnivore, eating some degree of prey."

Talos lived in a warm greenhouse world devoid of polar ice caps. In what is now North America, a shallow seaway that ran from the Gulf of Mexico through to the Arctic Ocean divided the continent into two landmasses, East America, or Appalachia, and West America, or Laramidia, for several million years.

"The area was basically the complete antithesis of what it is now," Zanno said. While the area is now quite dry, "it was extremely wet then, a very, very lush environment, almost swampy, and regularly bombarded by massive storms coming in off the seaway that divided North America at the time."

Mysteriously, the dinosaurs of the lost continent of Laramidia appeared to be unusually diverse. Normally, large animals are expected to span the whole area in which they live, as is the case with coyotes and mountain lions nowadays, and this might be expected to prove true with relatively small continents such as Laramidia. However, dinosaurs from the rock formation holding Talos are entirely distinct from ones living just a few hundred miles to the north in what is now Montana and Alberta.

"We already knew that some of the dinosaurs inhabiting southern Utah during the Late Cretaceous were unique, but Talos tells us that the singularity of this ecosystem was not just restricted to one or two species — rather, the whole area was like a lost world in and of itself," Zanno said.

When it comes to how this diversity might have developed, "we're just asking that question now," Zanno added. "Some preliminary research done by a colleague of mine suggests there may have been geographic barriers — mountain ranges and rivers — dividing up populations, keeping them isolated for long enough to become new species."

Much could still be found in this region. "We're going to continue scouring these badlands — this area is one of the last dinosaur graveyards anywhere in the United States," Zanno said.

The bones of Talos will be on exhibit for the first time in the Past Worlds Observatory at the new Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. The scientists detailed their findings online today (Sept. 19) in the journal PLoS ONE.

Baptistina Asteroid Not Responsible For Dinosaur Extinction

From International Business Times: Baptistina Asteroid Not Responsible For Dinosaur Extinction
Recent observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission suggest that the family of asteroids thought to be responsible for the dinosaurs' extinction 65 million years ago may not have been the culprit.

In its report, NASA scientists maintained the currently widespread belief that a large meteor crash 65 million ago did cause the dinosaurs' extinction. The report simply casts doubt on a 2007 theory that cited the giant Baptistina asteroid as a possible suspect.

The 2007 study using visible-light data from ground-based telescopes suggests that Baptistina crashed into another asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter about 160 million years ago. This collision supposedly sent shattered pieces of asteroids as big as mountains, one of which was believed to have hit Earth and caused the dinosaur extinction, according to a NASA release.

Since this scenario was first proposed, evidence developed that the so-called Baptistina family of asteroids was not the responsible party. With the new infrared observations from WISE, astronomers say that Baptistina may finally be ruled out.

"As a result of the WISE science team's investigation, the demise of the dinosaurs remains in the cold case files," NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Observation Program executive Lindley Johnson said. "With infrared light, WISE was able to get a more accurate estimate, which throws the timing of the Baptistina theory into question."

The scientists credit advanced technology for the ability to reach this conclusion. WISE's predecessor was the Infrared Astronomical Satellite. WISE is hundreds of times greater in terms of sensitivity.

WISE surveyed the entire celestial sky twice in infrared light from January 2010 to February 2011. The asteroid-hunting portion of the mission, called NEOWISE, used the data to catalog more than 157,000 asteroids in the main belt and discovered more than 33,000 new ones.

Visible light reflects off an asteroid. Without knowing how reflective the surface of the asteroid is, it's hard to accurately establish size. Infrared observations allow a more accurate size estimate. They detect infrared light coming from the asteroid itself, which is related to the body's temperature and size. Once the size is known, the object's reflectivity can be recalculated by combining infrared with visible-light data.

Calculations showed that the Baptistina parent asteroid only broke up around 80 million years ago that means the remnants had only 15 million years to get flung down to Earth to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs.

"This doesn't give the remnants from the collision very much time to move into a resonance spot, and get flung down to Earth 65 million years ago. This process is thought to normally take many tens of millions of years," said study co-author Amy Mainzer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California in the release.

The asteroid family that produced the killer rock remains at large. Scientists are reconstructing positioning data in search of an asteroid about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) in diameter that smashed into Earth, leaving a massive crater-shaped impact basin in the Gulf of Mexico and meteorite-type minerals in the fossil records, Discovery News reported.

"We are working on creating an asteroid family tree of sorts," lead author Joseph Masiero said in a NASA statement. "We are starting to refine our picture of how the asteroids in the main belt smashed together and mixed up."

Dinosaur Diversity: Feathers In Amber Reveal New Image Of What Dinosaurs Looked Like

From Huffpost: Dinosaur Diversity: Feathers In Amber Reveal New Image Of What Dinosaurs Looked Like
WASHINGTON -- In science fiction, amber preserved the DNA that allowed rebirth of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. In real life, amber preserved feathers that provide a new image of what dinosaurs looked like.

"Now, instead of scaly animals portrayed as usually drab creatures, we have solid evidence for a fluffy colored past," reports Mark A. Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Examples of ancient feathers ranging from the simple to the complex are now being studied. They were preserved in amber found in western Canada, researchers led by Ryan C. McKellar of the University of Alberta report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Amber, hardened tree resin, preserved a mixture of feathers from 70 million years ago. Other feathers contained in amber dating to 90 million years ago are less diverse.

Specimens include simple filament structures similar to the earliest feathers of non-flying dinosaurs – a form unknown in modern birds – and more complicated bird feathers "displaying pigmentation and adaptations for flight and diving," the researchers reported.

Indications of feathers have been found on much older fossils, and the new discoveries indicate feathers continued to develop into modern form before the extinction of dinosaurs, explained Norell, who was not part of the research team.

A separate report by Roy A. Wogelius of the University of Manchester, England, published online June 30 by Science, reports the finding of trace metals in feather fossils, suggesting their colors included black, brown and a reddish-brown.

"Despite many reports over the past decade of feathered dinosaurs and new birds from China, only now are we beginning to understand just how diverse feather types were" millions of years ago, Norell said.

A New Sickle-Clawed Predator from Inner Mongolia

From Smithsonian.com, Dinosaur Tracking: A New Sickle-Clawed Predator from Inner Mongolia
Raptors are total media hogs. Ever since the big screen adaptation of Jurassic Park came out in 1993, the sickle-clawed carnivores have cast a disproportionately large shadow over the rest of their dinosaurian kin, especially their close relatives the troodontids.

If you’re any kind of dinosaur fan, chances are good that you have at least seen a troodontid dinosaur before. The genus Troodon is a common staple of dinosaur books and documentaries (including Dinosaur Revolution), and it looks like a more slender version of more imposing predators such as Deinonychus. There’s a good reason for this. Together Troodon and Deinonychus represent the two branches of the sickle-clawed dinosaur group known as the deinonychosauria: Troodon represents the troodontids and Deinonychus carries the banner for the dromaeosaurids. Among the things that distinguished troodontids from their dromaeosaurid relatives were relatively big brains, big eyes, an increased number of smaller teeth, and smaller sickle claws that, in some species, could not be retracted as far as in their cousins such as Velociraptor.

Troodon is only the most famous of its kind—perhaps because it has been known for the longest time—but many other troodontid dinosaurs have been named from sites in North America, Asia, and Europe. The latest dinosaur to join the family is Linhevenator tani from Inner Mongolia, China. The dinosaur was described by paleontologists Xing Xu, Qingwei Tan, Corwin Sullivan, Fenglu Han and Dong Xiao in the journal PLoS One.

Dating back to somewhere between 84 million to 75 million years ago, Linhevenator is just one of several recently described theropod dinosaurs to be recovered and described from Inner Mongolia. (The other two, appropriately enough, were the alvarezsaurid Linhenykus and the dromaeosaurid Linheraptor.) The skeletal material which represents the new dinosaur includes the skull and jaws, several vertebrae, the right shoulder blade and upper arm bone, part of the hips, a left thigh bone, the left foot and a few other fragmentary parts. Some of these bones were found articulated with each other, others not, but as troodontid dinosaurs go, Linhevenator is one of the more complete dinosaurs yet found.

What makes Linehvenator particularly unusual are some of the details of its limbs. Compared to other troodontids, Linhevenator had a relatively long shoulder blade, a relatively short and thick humerus, and its second toe was tipped in a specialized, retractable claw like that seen in Troodon but not in some earlier members of the group. This is a curious suite of characteristics. Whereas Linhevenator appears to have had a killing claw similar to that of its dromaeosaurid cousins like Deinonychus, the newly described dinosaur may have had proportionally short and strongly muscled arms. This may hint that Linhevenator was not using its arms to capture prey in the same way as dromaeosaurids or earlier troodontid dinosaurs, even if it did have a specialized killing claw. Instead, Xu and co-authors argue that the dinosaur may have had arms adapted to digging, climbing, or something else entirely, although testing these hypotheses is difficult at present. With any luck, additional discoveries of troodontids will help flesh out what these peculiar dinosaurs were like in life.

References:
Xu, X., Tan, Q., Sullivan, C., Han, F., & Xiao, D. (2011). A Short-Armed Troodontid Dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of Inner Mongolia and Its Implications for Troodontid Evolution PLoS ONE, 6 (9) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0022916

Discovery museum to open 'Dinosaurium'

From PhillyBurbs.com: Discovery museum to open 'Dinosaurium'
CHERRY HILL — Young paleontologists will dig the new Dinosaurium exhibit opening this weekend at the Garden State Discovery Museum.

Months in the making, the exhibit will feature a model Tyrannosaurus rex, whose ribs kids can tickle as they crawl through them, a Dino Dig and a Scientists’ Shack, where they can assemble skeletons and cast their own fossils to take home.

“We always thought of tipping our hat to the fact that New Jersey was where dinosaurs were discovered,” said museum director Kelly Lyons, referring to the 19th-century hadrosaurus find in Haddonfield.

Ron Maslanka of Howell, Monmouth County, is helping make the museum’s vision come true. He is a paleo-artist who makes dinosaurs out of fiberglass. He visited the museum to make a hadrosaurus for the lobby.

“Wouldn’t it be great if you had a dinosaur exhibit?” Maslanka suggested.

Lyons and museum co-founder Roree Iris-Williams agreed with Maslanka and the project got under way. One of the highlights of the 2,000-square-foot exhibit is a teenage-size Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that’s 35 feet long. An adult one would be about 50 feet, Lyons said.

A former teacher and set designer, Lyons said children have the urge to climb T. rex skeletons when they see them at natural history museums. That’s the experience she wanted to offer them at the Dinosaurium.

The wooden skeleton of the Discovery Museum’s T. rex is large enough for a young child to fit through its belly.

The children also can burrow through the “climbasaurus,” a 15-foot-tall wooden structure with a slide at the top, as if they were at a dinosaur excavation site.

They can hunt for bones in a large sandbox-type structure called the Dino Dig, which is filled with pulverized rubber bits hiding different types of dinosaur casts.

On a wooden balcony that overlooks the exhibit, children can try out the Roaring Room, where they can transform their voices into the calls of dinosaurs of different sizes, from the tweep of the tiny, chicken-size compsognathus to the ferocious bellow of a T. rex.

Nearby, a magnetic map of the United States — donated to the museum by WPVI Channel 6 — is used to show where dinosaur skeletons have been discovered throughout the United States.

“When kids come from out of town, they learn what was discovered in a place they know,” Iris-Williams said.

The map formerly was used by retired weatherman Dave Roberts in the days before weather reporting used computerized screens. Roberts will be on hand Thursday for the exhibit’s Fossil Fuel Cocktail Party, from 7 to 10 p.m., for those over age 18. Tickets are $20 for educators and museum members, and $25 for nonmembers.

The exhibit will open for members Friday and to the public Saturday.

After the new year, the Dinosaurium will be available to rent for after-hour parties.

The Garden State Discovery Museum on Springdale Road is a hands-on center designed to educate children from infancy to age 10 through a variety of interactive exhibits.

It is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and until 8:30 p.m. on Saturdays from October to April. Admission is $10.95 for adults and children, and $9.95 for seniors.

For more information, visit www.discoverymuseum.com or call 856-424-1233.

Fossil shows huge mouth evolution

From BBC Nature News: Fossil shows huge mouth evolution
An ancient whale fossil has shown a key step in the evolution of filter-feeding whales' enormous mouths.

Modern baleen whales, such as blue whales, can filter small marine creatures from huge volumes of water.

Their "loose" lower jaw joints enable them to produce a vast filter-feeding gape.

A study of this ancient jawbone showed that nature's largest mouths probably evolved to suck in large prey rather than to engulf plankton-filled water.

The researchers, from Australia and the US, reported their findings in the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters. The prehistoric jaw, they noted, was very different from modern baleen whales.

In modern whales, the lower jaw does not fuse at the "chin". Instead there is a specialised jaw joint that allows each side of the jaw to rotate.

By having two curved lower jaw bones that rotate in this way, baleen whales are able to produce huge gapes to take in massive quantities of water and prey.

GENTLE GIANTS


Baleen is a hair-like substance that grows from the roof of baleen whales' mouths
Baleen whales, such as grey, humpback and blue whales are the oceans's gentle giants. Rather than hunt large prey, they engulf vast quantities of water and filter out small fish, or plankton, with their baleen .

The efficiency of this filter feeding has allowed baleen whales to evolve into some of the world's biggest animals.

A blue whale, the largest animal that has ever lived, has a mouth cavity so vast that it can engulf a volume of water equivalent to its own body mass
Blue whale blubber mouth measured.

Lead researcher, Erich Fitzgerald from the Museum Victoria in Melbourne, said: "This is compelling evidence that these archaic baleen whales could not expand and rotate their lower jaws, which enables living baleen whales to engulf and expel huge volumes of seawater when filter feeding on krill and other tiny animals."

Crucially though, the fossilised whale, named Janjucetus hunderi, did have a very wide upper jaw. Dr Fitzgerald says that this widening was the earliest step in the evolution of today's whales' gigantic mouths.

He charted the anatomical features of whales on an "evolutionary tree" - from Janjucetus hunderi to the blue whale.

"I was able to discover the sequence of jaw evolution from the earliest whales to the modern giants of the sea," he said.

This chart indicated that "the first step towards the huge mouths of baleen whales may have been increasing the width of the upper jaw [to] suck fish and squid into the mouth one-at-a-time.

"The loose lower jaw joint that enables living baleen whales to greatly expand their mouths when filter feeding evolved later."

This particular whale was so primitive that it had not evolved its comb-like baleen; it had "ordinary" teeth.

Its fossilised jawbone was discovered in the 1970s by an amateur collector in a coastal town in Victoria, south-east Australia.

The fossil was discovered by an amateur collector "I first saw [it] while visiting a private collection in 2008," recalled Dr Fitzgerland. "I immediately recognised the characteristic shape of the lower jaws of a whale."

Jeremy Goldbogen, a researcher from the Cascadia Research Collective in Washington, who studies the feeding strategies of modern whales, said that bulk filter feeding was "one of the most fascinating adaptions in the animal kingdom".

He told BBC Nature: "An important point to note is that bulk filter feeding using [rotating jawbones] does not necessarily mean that suction is not used.

"A prime example of this are grey whales which are notorious suction filter feeders."

Perth: Top palaentologists to take closer look at Broome dinosaur footprints

From Perth Now (Australia): Top palaentologists to take closer look at Broome dinosaur footprints
TWO leading palaeontologists will be flown in from North America to examine the dinosaur footprints found at the site of the proposed Browse Basin gas hub near Broome.

The ancient footprints run along part of the Dampier Peninsula and have been found on the tidal flats at James Price Point, the location earmarked for Woodside’s $30 billion natural gas project.

The area is now heritage listed, but the new status may not halt development.

Dr Martin Lockley, a geology professor from the University of Colorado in Denver, and Richard McCrea, a curator at the Peace Region Palaeontology Research Centre in Canada, will travel to the Kimberley to study the dinosaur footprints and provide more information on their importance.

Department of State Development deputy director Nicky Cusworth said the palaeontologists both had expertise in dinosaur footprints and track-ways.

“We hope the new survey improves our understanding of the dinosaur footprint issues and the best approach to managing, and minimising, the impact of the precinct on valuable fossil records,” Ms Cusworth said.

“The study has been organised in response to issues raised in the public comment period for the Strategic Assessment Review, and a request from the Environmental Protection Authority for more information.”

The palaeontologists will survey the coastal sandstone platform about two kilometres south of James Price Point later this month, as well as James Price Point and other locations on the Dampier Peninsula.

Their report will be peer-reviewed and published.

The Kimberley Land Council has been invited to provide traditional owner representatives, an archaeologist and an anthropologist to help with the project and advise on cultural aspects.

The Dinosaur Toy Blog

I've just discovered this blog, and I recommend it to all dinosaur enthusiasts. There are several authors revewing these toys - and being knowledgeable about both dinosaurs and toys, tells you if they're anatomically correct (so far as is known, of course) or if they're not.

http://www.dinotoyblog.com

I'm unable to supply a sample post - but here's a screencap of it. Highly recommended.

9/24-25 in Dudley, UK: Dinosaur learning brought to life

From Dudley News: Dinosaur learning brought to life
YOUNGSTERS can learn all about dinosaurs at a event at Dudley Museum next week.

As part of the Rock and Fossil Festival, the St James’s Road museum will be showcasing some of London’s Natural History Museum’s dinosaur exhibition.

The festival runs at the museum and Dudley Concert Hall from 10am until 5pm on Saturday, September 24 and 10am until 4pm on Sunday, September 25.

A team from Birmingham University will also be on hand to identify any fossils taken in by families.

Visitors can also see a full size woolly mammoth and browse stalls selling minerals, fossils and jewellery.

Admission to the festival costs £2.50 for adults, £1.50 for children or £7.50 for a family ticket, which admits two adults and three children.

'Walking With Dinosaurs 3-D': A different kind of Alaska-made film

From AlaskaDispatch: 'Walking With Dinosaurs 3-D': A different kind of Alaska-made film
In an old Crowley building on a dead end road in South Anchorage, there’s a moviemaker’s playground taking shape. The nondescript two-story building is the new home of Evergreen Films’ Anchorage office, after years at a Hillside location that Evergreen’s director of business development, Kate Tesar, described as “pretty dicey” to get to.

That location will remain open for post-production purposes, but the new facilities will have more workspace, a 50-foot-tall by 50-foot-wide by 30-foot-deep greenscreen soundstage, and a 24-person theater for screening daily footage and edits of in-progress works. And in this new headquarters, a $65 million feature film will take shape.

That film, “Walking With Dinosaurs 3-D,” is being produced by Evergreen, BBC Earth Films and Reliance Pictures. The story will follow a young pachyrhinosaurus -- a dinosaur similar to the more-recognizable triceratops -- and tells that tale without dialogue or human characters.

Despite that hard-sell exterior, Evergreen chief executive Mike Devlin seemed confident the film will resonate with a large audience, and part of that confidence comes from the involvement of James Cameron, one of the world's most well-known directors and the creator of the 3-D “Avatar,” the highest-grossing film of all time. The Cameron Pace Group, a leading innovator of 3-D filmmaking technology, has lent its 3-D production experience to the film.

“We’ve always said that we wanted to have “Avatar”-class production values in our films,” said Devlin, estimating that around 30 of the approximately 50 films created in 3-D so far have utilized technology spearheaded by Cameron.

Devlin added that Cameron’s involvement allowed for a blending of technology and storytelling.

“The basic filmmaking is still the same,” no matter how much technology is involved, Devlin said. “You have to have a great film, a great story, first of all. Which is why we like working with James Cameron, because he comes at it as a storyteller.”

20th Century Fox has also shown its confidence in the film’s potential for success, by funding its distribution in the U.S. and some international markets as part of a deal inked last year.

'Get away from all that for a moment'
Devlin became part of Evergreen Films in 2008 after moving to Alaska in 2005 and starting a small production company following a career in the software business.

“After 100 quarters of making the numbers every quarter in the software business, this was a good place to get away from all that for a moment,” Devlin said.

In 2010, Alaska Native corporation NANA announced that it was investing several million in Evegreen Films and becoming a minority partner in the firm. NANA also started Piksik, a production services company. Robin Kornfield, president of Piksik, said the film industry represents another opportunity to diversify and create economic opportunities in Alaska.

“The whole reason for NANA to get involved in a new industry like the film business is related to our interest in producing job opportunities,” Kornfield said. She said that Piksik is also involved in the production of “Frozen Ground,” another major production about Alaska serial killer Robert Hansen that stars Nicolas Cage and John Cusack and is being filmed in Alaska. That production is expected to employ around 200 full-time, temporary employees, Kornfield said, although not all of those employees will be related to Piksik.

Kornfield added that NANA has taken its expertise in support infrastructure for the oil and mining industries to create a support company for the film industry, supplying catering, security, location scouting and other services.

“Basically all the things that we’re known to do here in Alaska, we can do in this industry,” Kornfield said. She also said that interest from their shareholders in working in the industry has been high. A training workshop offered to NANA in conjunction with a nonprofit filled all 25 available slots in two days.

When asked about the potential for upcoming projects, it seems that all of the interested parties play the cards close to the chest. That's in part due to the length of time from conception to production, and all the factors in between, Kornfield said.

“What I’ve learned -- and I’m a newcomer to this business -- is that it takes a long time, 2 years even, to take a project from a script to where there’s the funding for the project and all the planning is in order,” Kornfield said. “So it’s a long lead kind of business.”

'80-some minutes of dinosaurs'
While “Frozen Ground” doesn’t begin shooting until next month, “Walking With Dinosaurs 3-D” has already begun photography in several locations around Alaska. John Copeland, a co-producer of the film who worked on the Discovery Channel’s similarly-flavored documentary “When Dinosaurs Roamed America” in 2001 -- among other film credits -- revealed some of the details of the new film.

Copeland talks less like a film producer than a paleontologist, spitting out dinosaur names and behaviors off the cuff. He said some of the background photography -- over which the animated dinosaurs will be placed -- has already been shot at locations like the Crow Creek Mine near Girdwood and off the Sterling Highway on the Kenai Peninsula.

He lists off some of the dinosaurs that will be in the movie. That pachyrhinosaurus protagonist is the runt of a large dinosaur litter. Its herd moves with another herbivorous dino, the duck-billed edmontosaurus. One of the potential antagonists in the film is the carnivorous gorgasaurus, a dinosaur similar to but smaller than the well-known Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Copeland is also in tune with the technical aspects of the production. “These are photo-real looking dinosaurs. The audience is going to really believe that they are here, a level above what everybody fondly remembers about Jurassic Park,” Copeland said. “In Jurassic Park, there were only nine minutes of dinosaurs. This is going to be 80-some minutes of dinosaurs.”

The film offers a chance to illustrate new information about dinosaurs’ physiology and sociology. "In the last 20 years, we’ve learned more about dinosaurs than in the previous 150,” he said. The movie will focus heavily on those family relationships, and even the Gorgasaurus will be shown as part of a larger family unit.

Alaska wasn’t chosen simply because it’s a pretty shooting location.

All of the dinosaurs in the story actually lived in Alaska during the latest cretaceous period, approximately 70 million years ago, Copeland said, although they lived more in the northern parts of the state, closer to the poles. But the sub-Arctic rainforests of Southeast Alaska would be an environment similar to what they were living in at that time, so most of the background photography will be shot in Southcentral and Southeast, with Fairbanks also mentioned as a shooting location.

The Alaska Legislature voted this year to wait on renewing the film tax credit, a tax incentive program that provides up to 44 percent of a production’s value in tax credits. The renewal stalled after lawmakers said that more review of the program -- and who was qualifying for the lucrative credits -- was necessary. The Legislature will likely revisit the program during the next legislative session, with the current program set to expire in 2013.

Mike Devlin had high hopes for film production in Alaska when he founded his production studio in 2005. Since then, he’s seen major productions like “Everybody Loves Whales,” the Jon Voight thriller “Beyond,” and “Frozen Ground” come to the state, in addition to his heavy involvement in “Walking with Dinosaurs 3-D.” He urged a renewal of the program in order to see the industry continue to grow.

“The incentive needs to pass, or we’ll be doing a lot of filming outside of Alaska,” Devlin said.

Youngest ever dinosaur fossil found in Maryland

From TruthDIve: Youngest ever dinosaur fossil found in Maryland
Washington, Sept 15 (ANI): Paleontologists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have described a fossil, unearthed 14 years ago at College Park, Maryland, as the youngest nodosaur ever discovered.

Amateur dinosaur tracker Ray Stanford in 1997 discovered the fossil of an armored dinosaur hatchling in a creek bed following a large flood.

Nodosaurs are rarely found in the U.S., and Stanford’s discovery is the first of a new genus and species, Propanoplosaurus marylandicus, that lived in the Early Cretaceous Era about 110 million years ago.

After identifying his find as a nodosaur, Stanford called David Weishampel, Ph.D, a professor of anatomy at Hopkins. He and his fellow researchers confirmed the fossil to be a nodosaur by identifying the pattern of bumps and grooves on the skull, although it had a shorter snout than others.

Weishampel said that Stanford’s find also is the first dinosaur hatchling ever found in the eastern U.S.

“Now we can learn about the development of limbs and the development of skulls early on in a dinosaur’s life,” he said.

“We have the opportunity to find out about dinosaur parenting and reproductive biology, as well as more about the lives of Maryland dinosaurs in general,” he added.

Weishampel determined the dinosaur’s age by analyzing the development and articulation capability of the bones and its size – the body in the tiny fossil was only 13 cm long. Adult nodosaurs are estimated to have been 20 to 30 feet long.

He also said that the newborn nodosaur was drowned and got buried by sediment in the stream. We didn’t know much about hatchling nodosaurs at all prior to this discovery,” said Weishampel.

“And this is certainly enough to motivate more searches for dinosaurs in Maryland, along with more analysis of Maryland dinosaurs.”

Stanford has donated the hatchling nodosaur to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where it is now on display to the public and also available for research.

The findings are published in the September 9 issue of the Journal of Paleontology. (ANI)