Friday, August 8, 2014

Comparing to titans

"Oh, that one? That's a snake."

At this, I get shudders from the people who don't like snakes. Then they bend to closer to look at the image on my screen.... and then they see the fossil in my hand. It's tiny. It's seriously tiny. And it wasn't from a particularly tiny snake. This is one that you'd see crawling around outside even today. And no, not the worm snakes.

Suddenly, their ophidiophobia gives way to curious. That, or they think I'm joking.

Snakes seem really big when they make you nervous. And, not being the ten-foot-long beasts that they become in our retellings of encountering them, snakes have little bones. At least, the ones in the modern day do. They're basically long muscles supported by a few bones with a head, sharp teeth, and a stomach.


Vertebrae, because of the muscles they hold in each part of the body, are each slightly different, so generally it isn't hard to figure out where they came from in an animal. And because of this, it generally isn't overly difficult to do some fancy math and figure out how big an animal was.

So imagine a vertebra from a snake that is the size of my hand. It's not that big. But imagine the snake if the vertebra under my microscope is from a decent fellow.

Yeah. The paleontologists didn't believe it either at first until a snake specialist spoke up and pointed out that that was the only reptile with vertebrae like that.

So Titanoboa is born, 60 million years old, 48 feet long, and over two feet thick. How does that sit with those who fear snakes?




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My Story (Very briefly...)

Lots of people claim that they wanted to be paleontologists at the age of 3. So did I. The problem is, I never really grew out of it. My third birthday party had dinosaurs. Everywhere. I grew up digging in fossil dirt from Aurora, NC, looking for coral and shark teeth. I practically lived at my local science museums (and still do, only now I get to do research, fossil preparation, and work in collections!) When local paleontologists discovered a dinosaur with a "fossilized heart" (no longer considered such) when I was little, I got to meet the man who led the work. And then, years later a dinosaur bone with soft tissue turned up. I was officially hooked.
No longer was I dreaming about dinosaurs. I was actively pursuing the science behind prehistoric creatures. I didn't want to read about it, I wanted in on the action. So I started working at the museum, and finally going on my own adventures. And thus, I needed a place to share them and maybe inspire others the way I was inspired. I have gone from watching fossils be prepared from one side of the glass at the museum to working on them on the inside of the glass. I am a student working toward my goal. I can finally start to call myself a paleontologist.