Canada Day Special

With Canada Day today, I've decided to showcase a Canadian fauna of dinosaurs. This one is the richest, most distinctive and one of the oldest. 

The Red Deer River flows south from the Canadian Rockies, the Sawback range of Alberta. The river passes through plains, forests, and badlands of southern Alberta before merging in the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatchewan province. Along the shores are exposed stones, cliffs, and hills of rock 75 million years old. For over a century, its secrets have been revealed, producing one of the richest fossil sites in the world. These dinosaurs are part of North American culture, and have become pillars of dinosaur research around the world and for years to come.

Welcome my friends, to Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta.

An overview of Dinosaur Exhibits part 5: The Royal Ontario Museum

I have held off talking about this museum for a while now, as it has been nearly 15 years since I’ve been there last, and not only have I forgotten a great deal of it but also it has undergone extensive renovation in 2008.  Canada, like the USA, is rich in dinosaur fossil material, and sort of acts like Mongolia to China in terms of fossils-the hotbed of Cretaceous rock. British Colombia brought us the Cambrian explosion in the Burgess Shale, but for dinosaurs, Alberta and Saskatchewan are the real treasure trove. There’s really nothing like them outside of Montana and Wyoming to the south and Mongolia across the Pacific. Lambe, Brown, and the Sternbergs found a gold mine of Cretaceous fossils, one that is still being excavated today. 

Like the southern American West, while a lot of fossils are stored and studied nearby (in this case, the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller near Edmonton), a great deal have made it to the East. While the US fossils were shipped to Chicago, Pittsburg, Washington, New Haven, Philadelphia and Washington DC,  the Canadian fossils were sent to Toronto and Ottawa. The National Canadian Museum of Nature will be covered next in the series, but today we’re looking at the Royal Ontario Museum.

An Overview of Dinosaur Exhibits Part Three: The Field Museum

I think everyone has their favorite place in the world, a place that just restores their life, a place tied up with countless memories. It can be a house or a park, or a stadium, or a school.  For me it was the Field Museum of Natural History on the East Side of Chicago near Grant Park. I can’t remember when I first went. It might have been in 1991, or even as a baby.  You see, when I lived in Chicago, you could go to the library and get passes for the Field Museum, Art Institute, Shedd Aquarium or the Adler Planetarium. My mother didn’t have a job at the time, so she would take me, my mother, and our two cousins to the museums and zoos of Chicago. 

Documentary Review: Clash of the Dinosaurs

Paleontologists usually don’t get furious, at least not at their job. Yeah, there are arguments and disagreements and the natural reaction to creationists and other forms of pseudoscience and anti-science, but personal offense isn’t usually part of the day. This makes such incidents very notable and significant. You see, the media is both the ally and nemesis of scientists; most of the time they help each other out, but when the deals go bad, things can be very messy. Today I’m going to talk about Matt Wedel and Clash of the Dinosaurs.

Movie Review: Fantasia (1940)

It’s Friday, and time for another film review! This week is a return to good movies, and this one is one of my first, and one of my favorites. My dad introduced me to Classical Music at a young age, and decided to nourish it with the 1940 Walt Disney animated classic Fantasia. The dazzling colors and shapes set to Bach’s toccata and fugue in D minor, the antics of Mickey Mouse set to Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the classical majesty combined with colorful creatures of classical myth set to Beethoven’s 6^th symphony, satirical slapstick animal ballet of Ponchielli’s Dance of the hours and the nightmarish demonic revelry in Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain all made impacts on me, but it was the prehistoric epic of the Rite of Spring that impressed me the most. It was at the time I loved dinosaurs thanks to this film, The Land Before Time, and trips to the Field Museum’s dinosaur hall. Thanks to Fantasia, my love of dinosaurs increased and my love of classical musical blossomed. It’s still one of my favorite movies and Stravinsky is one of my favorite composers.