Movin' Right Along: Dinosaurs Again, and Ghengis Khan

Most Complete T-Rex Skeleton Ever Found

2019-09-07 Saturday

We woke up today to gray skies, but the rain had stopped falling. Joey told me he had been up in the middle of the night (I slept like a log!!) because he heard a “strange noise.” Upon investigation, it seems that our oldest water hose had burst. Since it had already been repaired twice, we put “new water hose” on our shopping list.

Despite having the Jeep still hooked up from last night, it still took us a ridiculous amount of time to leave the campground. I took Cassie for a long walk, and she played with another dog in the huge fenced in dog yard, so that was nice for her to get some exercise. Finally, we pulled out just at 11:00. We drove about 15 minutes to the Museum of the Rockies, adjacent to the Montana State University (wrong MSU again!) campus. There was a large RV Parking area, so we were comfortable leaving the RV there while we went inside.

This museum is famous for its dinosaur collection, and it certainly did not disappoint! Montana is one of the premier states for dinosaur discoveries, and the museum focused on Montana in the presentations. This was no problem, because just to name one thing, the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever discovered was found in Montana, and it is in this museum! MSU (the one here, I mean) has a distinguished paleontology department as a result of the rich fossil record in their backyard. All of the displays included the name of the person who first found the bone(s), as well as the team who removed it from the rock. Often these folks were interns or doctoral students studying at this school.

The displays also were excellent in that the beginning of the dinosaur section included some basics, such as what paleontology is, how the museum handles its samples, and the fact that all the displays included whether it was the real thing (labeled B for bone) or a replica (R). They explained that sometimes the real bones are still being studied. There was even a small lab included, with a volunteer inside working on cleaning some bones. The sign on the door said to “knock if you have a question,” and we actually did that at one point.

Bottom line, we got to the Museum at 11:30ish, and we stayed all day, until 4:00 (it closed an hour early, much to our dismay.) We did take a break to go have some lunch in the RV, but otherwise, we were with the dinosaurs. There were amazing samples and explanations, including the fact that paleontolgists now classify dinosaurs as either “non-avian” or “avian.” Most of the extinct larger dinosaurs are “non-avian,” but a particular class of dinosaur is still alive--they are the “avian” class--which we call BIRDS! I knew that the general understanding now was that birds “evolved” from dinosaurs, but from a paleontological point of view, apparently they ARE still considered dinosaurs. To put it another way, dinosaurs are not extinct! Only some are, the way some mammals (such as the ones we saw at the Ashfall Fossil Beds) are extinct. [Note: Blogger has become impossible to manipulate photos into... so all my photos will be at the end of the blog (I hope.)]

I could have spent a lot longer in the dinosaur section, because I didn’t have time to watch a number of videos, such as one which showed a day in the life of the paleontologists who found a particular fossil. I did sit through one which explained how the microbes and bacteria which we saw at Yellowstone (all those colorful bacterial mats at Grand Prismatic Pool, for instance) are actually examples of what happened all over the Earth as the geologic ages passed. The reason Yellowstone is so fascinating is that we can see for ourselves life forms which survive based on chemicals rather than on light (such as plants.)

Meanwhile, the dinosaur bones were the stars of the exhibit. The T-Rex was found in Montana, and is on loan to the museum. It was found on Bureau of Land Management land, which means it is strictly speaking owned by the American people. It’s on loan from the BLM. The skeleton is the most complete T-Rex ever found, and we were fascinated by the reconstruction. The creature had two sets of ribs, but no sternum attaching them-- Joey told me he thinks they must have been contained by the musculature of the animal.

One thing we noticed (which is what we asked the volunteer worker about) was an odd, long bone which seemed to come down between the two femurs. It looked very odd, and was something we saw in almost all the dinosaurs. The volunteer said she thought the bone was analogous to the pubic bone in people, but here it seemed to extend quite far from the pelvic bones. Joey added while I was writing this that what really freaked him out was the similarity of the “hands” of the bipedal dinosaurs to human hands--they have not evolved that differently. He says he also learned a lot about the comparative anatomy of birds that he didn’t know before-- the scientists who study this stuff do a lot of work with modern animals looking for similarities in bone structures, which helps to understand what the dinosaur’s body functioned like.

Another thing we learned was that some of the features of some dinosaurs, such as the plates on the back of a stegosaurus, may have been for “display”, the way modern birds have colorful features for display (think of peacocks, for example.) So several of the reconstructed dinosaurs were depicted with some distinct colors, with feathers in various parts of their bodies (this is known from the bones themselves.) It was just fascinating. We saw dinosaurs which probably burrowed underground (again, similarities to features in modern burrowing animals), and clutches of dinosaur eggs. Most everything in the dinosaur exhibit was original--there were not very many reconstructions, although the series of triceratops skulls had several reconstructions in order to present a complete display of the animals from when they were babies, through the juvenile stage, to adulthood. The skull undergoes certain changes as the animal ages.

One more funny thing-- I read that T-Rex’s teeth replaced themselves every six months, so the animal went through a number of sets of teeth. This sounds so weird, but the display explanation added, “Humans only replace their set of teeth once during their lives.” Until then, I had never thought of people as “replacing” a set of teeth this way--but of course, that’s what happens when we lose our “baby teeth” for our adult ones. The same thing was true of dinosaurs, only more frequently during their life span.

All in all, this was so interesting, but at about 3:00 they announced that the museum was closing an hour early for a private event. We hadn’t seen ANYTHING else except a movie in the planetarium, on how the earth was created. Joey said it was very good-- sadly, I fell asleep while Jupiter was the only planet, and I missed the rest of the movie. But besides this, there was a hall of “original peoples” of Yellowstone Park, i.e. Native Americans who lived in the vicinity. In that hall there were also posters and photos of the original stores and hotels set up in the late 19th century for tourists. I have to say, we pretty much ran through that section.

To our surprise, when we went into the next room, it had a lot of early 20th century vehicles used in Montana, including a set-up of a gas station, a “sheep wagon” (which looked sort of like a covered wagon with a bed, stove, table, and cupboards--in other words, an RV!-- for the guy who followed sheep herds over the prairie), and a “tar-paper shack”. We looked around for 10 more minutes.

Then we hurried into the last exhibit, a temporary exhibit on Ghengis Khan. We started at the wrong end for that-- and I found it fascinating, but Joey wasn’t as interested as I was. I have a book on Genghis Khan, so I knew his history. Basically he united the Mongol tribes, controlled most of Asia (the idea of the Mongols sweeping down and conquering people was entirely true), and then he implemented a lot of ideas which we still use today, such as diplomatic immunity for political representatives of other areas, the pony express concept (which was described by Marco Polo), national parks (he set aside some of his favorite hunting areas and forbade settlements there), wearing trousers (men wore robes before that, but trousers were much more convenient for riding horses), protection of water sources, religious freedom, the use of paper money (also reported on by Marco Polo), and tollbooths! There was also a brief video explaining that Ghengis Kahn (or perhaps one of HIS ancestors) was the progenitor of a huge percentage of Asian people--discovered by tracing the Y chromosome which unites this large group. So maybe he also populated the countries as well as ruling them!

Ghengis Khan also wrote a code of laws and morality (he lived at the beginning of the 13th century), including such items as, “All religions are to be respected equally,” and “Lies, theft, treachery and adultery are forbidden...whoever violates these commands is to be put to death.” Joey’s favorite was, “Do not wash clothes until they are completely worn out.” I had to notice this one: “Don’t behave as high as a mountain. Though a mountain is high, it will be climbed by animals.”

All this information was, as I said, at the very end of the large exhibit, and we didn’t have time for most of it (including the information about horses, warfare, etc.) They even had a dance group from Mongolia (which is now an independent nation) so we could learn more about the Mongol art and music-- of course, we did not go to that either. At ten minutes to four, I rushed into the gift shop, looked around hastily, and let them kick me and the last stragglers out of the museum. I could have used the extra hour!! All in all, this museum was absolutely fantastic, and I’m still thinking of going back tomorrow; our admission was good for two days.

From there, we drove to Walmart, where we are spending the night. The wifi reception was excellent, and we were able to watch the entire Michigan State (the right MSU) football game. There was also a home game for the wrong MSU today, and we are joined in the Walmart parking lot by at least 20 other RVs. It is quite remarkable; I have never seen so many overnighters at once. Our guess is that they are here for the game--the RV park we stayed in last night was booked solid tonight so we couldn’t have stayed even if we’d wanted to. After the game was over, we went inside and paid for our free parking with a $200 purchase of groceries, a new water hose as mentioned above, some TV cables to perhaps get local TV stations on my computer, and a pair of sweat pants for Joey, among other items. Now, I just have to fight with my blog platform, in an attempt to upload some of the many museum photos I took today. And then, to sleep!