A Visit To the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Part II: Terror of the South & the Nature Research Center

Clash of the titans.

Having covered the Prehistoric North Carolina exhibit at the NCSM (North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences), it's time to head on into two other fossiliferous displays.

The first of these is the impressive Terror of the South dome, which is probably fair to call the museum's centrepiece exhibit. The other is the Nature Research Center, which opened a few years ago as a new wing to the museum, so it was totally new to me on this visit. All photos were taken by yours truly, click the break to continue...

A Visit To the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Part I: Prehistoric North Carolina

Albertosaurus on the hunt. 

Over the summer, I took a trip to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (NCSM from here on in) in Raleigh. It's a big, beautiful museum with an awful lot to see, free admission, and a stellar museum shop. Since the museum's collections are quite extensive, I'm going to stick to the palaeontology parts as that's the general thrust of Noah's Ravens but I could always revisit the other collections I photographed - mainly animals, taxidermied and living - at some indeterminate future time. Of course, I said I would post pictures just after I visited, and that was back in July, so... maybe I shouldn't get ahead of myself.

All photographs were taken by me. Click to see them below the break...

The Most Wondrous Duckbill In All the West

In the in-development video game Saurian, which I wrote about recently far beyond recent memory, the world of the very-Latest Cretaceous environment preserved within the sedimentary rocks of the Hell Creek Formation is brought to life. One of the most abundant large animals in this ecosystem is a large, shovel-mouthed herbivore belonging to the group of dinosaurs known as hadrosaurs, or more commonly in the popular parlance, duckbills.

In Saurian, the Hell Creek duckbill is called Anatosaurus annectens. This not the name most people in the palaeo community use for this animal.  In just about all sources for the last few decades, the Hell Creek duckbill is called Edmontosaurus annectens. So what's up with the name Anatosaurus?

The duckiest duckbill, usually called Edmontosaurus annectens. Its scale
patterns are based on 'mummies' that preserve fossilised skin impressions.
[art by the author]

Saurian - And Why You Should Care About It

Dramatis dinosaurae: Tyrannosaurus rex, Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis,
Dakotaraptor steini, and Triceratops prorsus, from left to right. These are four
of the playable animal species in Saurian, with two more yet to be revealed.
[image from Saurian's blog]

Saurian. If you've had any interaction with the palaeoblogosphere for well over a year, there's a pretty decent chance you've come across something involving this in-development computer game. Since the end of May, Saurian has been even more prominent in the online palaeo community because of the launch of its Kickstarter - which closed a couple weeks ago after successfully meeting the original goal for funding the game, and several of the stretch goals too. But why is this upcoming video game such a big deal among dinosaur lovers, and why is the fact that it is a big deal important?

It Came From Dinovember III: The Dinosaur Drawings That Would Not Die

Never fear, Raven Lunatics, Noah's Ravens is back from another totally unplanned and largely unnecessary hiatus. Before we dive into new material around these here parts, it's high time I finished up my Dinovember recap, a shameful seven months after the actual event. Without further ado...

It Came From Dinovember II: Return of the Dinosaur Drawings

Well, so much for getting a lot of posts in! Dinovember wrapped up well over two months ago, and over a month has passed since I began my review of what I produced for it, but... well, better late than never, right?

Kileskus aristotocus was tyrannosauroiding before T. rex made it cool.
[by the author]

It Came From Dinovember

Firstly, I would like to apologise for the total lack of content here over the past several weeks months. I've been busy transitioning back to college life and I haven't really given Noah's Ravens the attention I'd have liked to. I've got a lot of ideas for some new posts so the plan now is to begin posting regularly with a lot more content!

Now then - last month I participated in what some have called 'Dinovember,' a 30-day celebration of dinosaur art; I produced a drawing a day.* I'd like to share them here (click to embiggen, of course), with a little bit of background on the animals pictured and how I restored them. Click the break below to continue...

* Well, I produced 30 drawings. I got behind several times and had to play catch-up, but did get all 30 done by the end of the month. Haha! My most productive bout of artiness since I was about nine.

A Visit To the McWane Science Center, Part II: Southern Sea Monsters

In the previous post, we took a look at the Alabama Dinosaurs exhibit at the McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama. However, as you may remember from the last post, much of Alabama was underwater during the Cretaceous Period, submerged by a shallow seaway.

Notice how much of Alabama is submerged by a shallow seaway.
[image from Sampson et al, 2010, 'New Horned Dinosaurs from Utah Provide Evidence for
Intracontinental Dinosaur Endemism', under CC Attribution 2.5 Generic licence]

The warm waters of this shallow sea teemed with life, and after more than 75 million years, the fossil record of these marine organisms can be found in Alabama, with a diversity and richness far surpassing the state's known collection of dinosaur fossils from this time. McWane presents a sampling of this prehistoric marine life in the sister exhibit to Alabama Dinosaurs, fetchingly entitled Sea Monsters...

WARNING: Clicking the 'read more' link below without having this open in another tab is highly dangerous. Proceed at your own risk.

A Visit To the McWane Science Center, Part I: Dinosaurs of the Deep South

Sorry for the long absence. Hopefully there will be new content -- including art -- here soon.

Anyway, if you should ever find yourself in Birmingham, Alabama, as my family and I did last week, a day at the McWane Science Center is sure to prove a day well spent. McWane features a museum as well as an IMAX, and most of the exhibits are geared toward kid-friendly interactivity: there is a hall of physical-science based challenges, brain teasers, and the like, an aquarium featuring a shark and ray touch pool, and space for visiting exhibits, which at the time of our trip was hosting an interesting, interactive-heavy exhibit on the history toys and games over 20th and 21st centuries. Of course, as soon as we'd paid our admission, I dragged the family up a flight of stairs to get to what we all* came to see: the dinosaurs.

A nodosaur browses amongst the ferns as an Appalachiosaurus stalks behind it.
[photograph by the author]

*I

'Footmarks On Stone,' or, Why This Blog Is Called Noah's Ravens

The year is 1802. In South Hadley, Massachusetts, a farmer called Pliny Moody discovers something strange in a slab of rock. Closer investigation seems to indicate that the unusual markings in the rock are footprints, with three narrow, spread-out toes, very similar to the footprints of birds.

The mysterious track-maker was referred to as 'Noah's Raven,' in reference to the first bird set out from the ark after the flood in the book of Genesis; presumably these footprints were thought to have been made by the raven, which flew 'back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth,' and, apparently, eventually came to land in western Massachusetts.

The 'Noah's Raven' specimen at the Beneski. [photograph by the author]