Front row, from left: Chloe, Sidney, M'Kinzy, Kyle, Jamie. Middle
row, from left: Amy Martiny, Gus, Jeremy, Alaina, Izzi. Back row,
from left: Ryan Ridgely, Dave Dufeau, William Porter, Eric Snively,
Jason Bourke, Larry Witmer
The Young Scholars OHIO program, in conjunction with the
OU Office of Nationally
Competitive Awards and the
Honors Tutorial
College, brought about 35 profoundly gifted students
aged 6–16 from 10 states across the country to Ohio
University for a range of enrichment programs. WitmerLab
hosted nine of these students on 17 May 2010 for a
workshop wherein the students worked with the 50+
dinosaur skull casts in the lab and WitmerLab staff and
grad students to learn how paleontologists "flesh out"
out the past. In addition to discovering the diversity
and drama of dinosaur evolution, the students created
this Field Guide to the Dinosaurs of the WitmerLab. A
more complete photo gallery to our dinosaur skull cast
collection can be found on our
WitmerLab Collection page.
This video ran on the lab big-screen during the
workshop.
Here's
more.
Sidney & Conchoraptor
Kyle &
T. rex
M'Kinzy &
Archaeopteryx
The Conchoraptor is a dinosaur related to
birds today. It lived in Mongolia in the Late
Cretaceous, 76 MYA. They probably were
omnivores, and they had feathers.
My favorite dinosaur is very big. It has very
sharp teeth. It is a T. rex. It’s bigger
than you think!
Archaeopteryx was my dino. It looked cool
to me. It has teeth and feathers.
Alaina & Diatryma
Jeremy & Deinonychus
Jamie & Gastornis
My favorite dinosaur has no teeth. Diatryma
is a bird with a powerful jaw. I like him
because he doesn’t seem harmful and he seems to
be a peaceful kind.
My favorite dinosaur is Deinonychus. It
has sharp claws, and that is one of the reasons
I like it. Another reason why I like it is
because it is COOL!!!
Gastornis could crush your head like a coconut.
It was the top bird of the Pliocene. It ate
small horses and
Leptictidiums.
It only laid one egg at a time. It was very
territorial. [note: Gastornis is the
European name for Diatryma.]
Chloe &
T. rex
Gus & Velociraptor/Falcarius
Izzi & Anhanguera
The T. rex is the most interesting dinosaur to
me. It has the most powerful jaws in the world
of dinosaurs! The T. rex’s jaw is deeper
than a rhinoceros’s. The T. rex is very
interesting because the teeth turn out to be
broken. They break by eating dinosaurs and
dinosaur bones and fall off and they don’t even
notice it while they eat their dinner. The T.
rex has very little nostrils but they can
still breathe. The nostril is at the tip of the
nose, and the eye opening kind of looks like a
sock. The eye is at the top of the “sock.” There
are a lot of muscles in a T. rex skull.
The muscle wraps around inside of the skull to
hold the skull together. Some of the muscles go
to the outside of the skull. The teeth of the
T. rex can grow to about 15 centimeters,
with a 17 centimeter root. I love the T . rex!!!!!!!
T. rex had a hole behind its eye, with
bone in it for muscles to attach to. If you see
a T. rex skull, you may see some little
dots. Those dots are used for carrying blood to
the skin or lips to make the dinosaur look
scary. When you look at a dinosaur skull, you
may see a little hole in front of the eye and
poke your finger through. That was used when the
dinosaur was alive for an air sac to go into the
bone.
The Velociraptor was a predatory raptor
from the late Cretaceous Period. It is famous
for the second digit on its foot, which was
‘cocked’ and was used to stab and slash at the
Velociraptor’s prey. Hunting in packs,
they could take down prey many times their
size. It is thought that they were warm-blooded
to some degree, due the large amount of energy
needed to hunt. The first specimen was
discovered in the Mongolian Desert in 1922.The Falcarius was an omnivorous
therizinosaurian dinosaur from the Cretaceous
Period. It is related to the larger predators,
such as the Tyrannosaurus rex. The
therizinosauroids are famous for their large
claws, with those of some species reaching six
feet long. The first specimen was discovered in
Utah in 2005.
[note: Izzi switched from Anhanguera (the
pterodactyl with her in the pic) to Smilodon
and Thylacosmilus.] The Smilodon
shares very similar hunting tactics with the
Thylacosmilus. They both have long, sharp
teeth, a similar jaw and facial structure, and
both kill their prey by puncturing its airway.
They could be easily mistaken by looking at
their skeleton for each other, but are two
distinctly different species.
— Photography
by Amy Martiny —
Ohio University
Heritage
College of Osteopathic Medicine
Irvine Hall, Athens, Ohio 45701 740-593-2530 740-597-2778 fax
