Tag: American Museum of Natural History

A Really Cool Prehistoric Critter

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of diplocaulus

I loved this creature from the first time I ever saw it–probably 6 years old, blissfully paging through an illustrated book on dinosaurs.

This is Diplocaulus, three feet long, and not a dinosaur but an amphibian. Dig that head! The first time my aunts took me to the American Museum of Natural History, and I saw the Diplocaulus fossils on display–just like in the pictures!–I could hardly contain my joy. And no other animal ever had a head like that.

These animals lived in Texas, in swamps and bayous which aren’t swamps and bayous anymore.

Now, imagine my surprise when I saw this picture:

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Holy cow! Somebody’s got a live Diplocaulus–right there, in a bucket!

But it was only a photo-shop job. In all the places that I’ve looked, I’ve never found a living Diplocaulus.

Please let me know if you do.

A New ‘T. rex’… with Feathers?

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This is the brand-new Tyrannosaurus reconstruction at the American Museum of Natural History in New York–complete with feathers. Scientists “know” T. rex had feathers because “closely related species” about a twentieth his size have left fossils with traces of something that might be feathers. So that’s how they “know.”

Sorry, I’m not buying this. For one thing, it looks shabby–more like a “winosaur” than a “dinosaur.” I mean, really, Turok Son of Stone would’ve laughed himself silly if he ever saw a Tyrannosaur that looked like a worn-out feather duster. Or a worn-out 1960s celebrity trying to make a comeback on a 1990s TV talk show.

See the source image

Oh, well… If you can’t idly speculate about dinosaurs, what can you idly speculate about?

Make it idle enough and you just might win a chair at a prestige university.

The Biggest Predatory Mammal Ever

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I didn’t mean to hit you with a prehistoric critter today, but this video caught my eye and I just can’t help sharing it with you.

Andrewsarchus, from Mongolia, is kind of hard to study because there’s only its yard-long skull that’s been preserved–and only one of those. But if you’ve ever stood in front of that skull, on display at the American Museum of Natural History, as I have, you will stand in awe. I mean, this beast had jaw-muscles as thick as a strong man’s upper arms. It could probably eat your car. In fact, that’s what I think it did eat–cars. With the people still in them.

God’s creative energy–there’s just no reining it in!

The Baddest Beast in Lintum Forest

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This animal is so rare, neither Lintum Foresters nor Abnak hunters have as yet found a name for it. Jack and Ellayne, in Bell Mountain, saw one making off with half a knuckle-bear in its jaws.

The Andrewsarchus, shown here from Tim Haines’ Walking With Beasts, is known from just a single skull discovered in Mongolia by Roy Chapman Andrews’ Central Asiatic Expedition. From the neck down, everything else is pure conjecture. Not having read Bell Mountain, scientists still haven’t decided quite how to reconstruct this monster. If you ever get a chance to visit the American Museum of Natural History in New York, don’t miss the Andrewsarchus skull. It’s a yard long, and those massive teeth and muscle attachments look like they mean business.

‘Let Me Share a Treasure with You’ (2017)

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Image result for images of amnh central asia expeditions

We have a lot of new readers here, so you guys would have missed this, first time around.

https://leeduigon.com/2017/02/20/let-me-share-a-treasure-with-you/

This wonderful footage was taken, most it, by J. B. Shackleford, photographer for the American Museum of Natural History’s expeditions to the Gobi Desert in the 1920s.

Watch: this is the key to another world.