Saturday, August 8, 2015

Camarasaurus

This picture made my day, and seemed like a good excuse to create a little bit of a fact sheet about Camarasaurus, seeing as this little girl took quite a liking to him!

  • 1/5 of dinosaurs in the Morrison are generally camasaurs, although oddly enough they are disproportionate to this at Cleveland Lloyd (just like everything else.)
  • The skull is actually the same one that was put on an Apatosaurus to form the skeleton of the now considered false genus brontosaurus.
  • The name means chambered lizard for all the hollow pockets in the back bones.
  • Length: fifty feet
  • The dinosaur had spoon shaped teeth, to eat rougher plants.
  • Actually, this is one of the smaller sauropods.
  • Camasaurs had smaller front legs than back legs.

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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.