Paleofest Report 2019

Welcome back! It’s this time of year again where I go down the annual Paleofest Symposium, held every March at the Burpee Museum in Rockford Illinois. There’s always new discoveries, new experiences, and a lot of great talks about paleontology research. For further details, I once again recommend our MC Scott Williams, for tweets check out Dr. Thomas Holtz’s twitter, and for images ask Todd Johnson. Once again there’s no particular theme, but once again younger researchers and women researchers take the foreground on a wide variety of topics.

Species that Don't Get Enough Publicity #12: Barylambda

The Field Museum is home to many holotypes-Brachiosaurus, the Southwestern species of Parasaurolophus, Cryolophosaurus, Cacops, Secernosaurus, Varanops and Thylacosmilus (more on them later). However, one prominent specimen is a complete skeleton that puzzles visitors and scientists alike. It’s the first thing visitors see exiting the theater that in turn exits from the dinosaur hall. It’s mounted next to the tusked skulls of Coryphodon and Eobasileus in a glass case, facing across from another showing extant orders of mammals under Charles Knight’s depiction of Uintatherium and Orohippus.  It’s been displayed outside the exhibit on the gallery, and when Life Over Time opened in 1992, the mount was heralded, like the others, by a colorful circus banner by Glen C. Davies. I distinctly remember the hairy mammal in a boxer’s robe and gloves, raising his first Ali-style over a fallen dinosaur in the ring, a symbol of mammalian success as the dinosaurs fell to the mass extinction. This is Barylamdba.

An overview of Dinosaur Exhibits part 6: Denver Museum of Nature and Science

Colorado is what you can consider a rich state for fossils.  Marine reptiles, prehistoric mammals, ice age megafauna, Jurassic dinosaurs and Cretaceous dinosaurs can all be found on both sides of the Rockies.  On the west side are the Museum of Western Colorado in Grand Junction and the Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center in Canyon City.  On the other are  the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park and the subject of today’s article, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.