Roadside dinos of Yermo, California
April 27, 2015
A couple of weekends ago, London and I went camping and stargazing at Afton Canyon, a nice dark spot about 40 miles east of Barstow. On the way home, we took the exit off I-15 at Ghost Town Road, initially because we wanted to visit the old Calico Ghost Town. But then we saw big metal dinosaurs south of the highway, and that’s how we came to Peggy Sue’s Diner and in particular the Diner-saur Park.
The Diner-saur Park is out behind the diner and admission is free. There are pools with red-eared sliders, paved walkways, grass, trees, a small gift shop, and dinosaurs. Here’s a Spinosaurus – curiously popular in the Mojave Desert, those spinosaurs.
Ornithischians are represented by two stegosaurs, this big metal one and a smaller concrete one under a tree.
The turtles are entertaining. They paddle around placidly and crawl out to bask on the banks of the pools, and on little islands in the centers.
The gift shop is tiny and the selection of paleo paraphernalia is not going to blow away any hard-core dinophiles. But it is not without its charm. And, hey, when you find a dinosaur gift shop in the middle of nowhere, you don’t quibble about size. London got some little plastic turtles and I got some cheap and horribly inaccurate plastic dinosaur skeletons to make a NecroDinoMechaLaser Squad for our Dinosaur Island D&D campaign.
Now, about that sauropod. The identification sign on the side of the gift shop notwithstanding, this is not a Brachiosaurus. With the short forelimbs and big back end, this is clearly a diplodocid. The neck is too skinny for Apatosaurus or the newly-resurrected Brontosaurus, and too long for Diplodocus. I lean toward Barosaurus, although I noticed in going back through these photos that with the mostly-straight, roughly-45-degree-angle neck, it is doing a good impression of the Supersaurus from my 2012 dinosaur nerve paper. Compare this:
to this:
If I had noticed it sooner, I would have maneuvered for a better, more comparable shot.
Guess I’ll just have to go back.
Reference
Roadside reptiles of Gila Bend, Arizona
January 17, 2014
Well, I see that our ‘roadside dinos‘ category is in a sad state. Not from lack of posts, but because most of the so-called roadside dinos found therein are entirely too polished. Real roadside dinos are assembled by non-paleontologists armed only with scrap metal, welding equipment, The Giant Golden Book of Dinosaurs (again, the real one), and a dream. Take this beauty, which stands proudly outside of a gas station in the little ol’ town of Gila Bend, Arizona. It’s covered in graffiti and you can see through the gaps in its metal hide–right into the acetylene-powered heart of roadside Americana.
Plus, it has its neck in the right place. Who could pass that up?
It shares space with this somewhat less convincing rattlesnake. I note that the snake is leaning away from the road, and the kink in its spine is at about bumper-height. In situations like these, one can only say a silent thank-you that whatever poor drunk fool did this at least had the good taste to miss the sauropod.
If you make it to Gila Bend, you’ll be roughly half a time zone away from everywhere else, so you’ll probably be hungry. After you gas up, look for this sign:
next to this restaurant:
where you can sit at this table (maybe):
and eat some freakin’ awesome pancakes while revelling in the glories of the Space Race. Or, you know, a burger or something. We hit the Space Age Restaurant twice on our trip to Tucson last November, once each way, and it was excellent both times. There’s even a gift shop, says so right on the sign.
You’re welcome!
Night at the Museum: LACM’s Camp Dino
April 8, 2013
Last night London and I spent the night in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (LACM), as part of the Camp Dino overnight adventure. So we got lots of time to roam the exhibit halls when they were–very atypically–almost empty. Above are the museum’s mounted Triceratops–or one of them, anyway–and mounted cast of the Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis holotype, presented in glorious not-stygian-darkness (if you went through the old dino hall, pre-renovation, you know what I mean).
We got there early and had time to roam around the museum grounds in Exposition Park. The darned-near-life-size bronze dinos out front are a minor LA landmark.
The rose garden was already closed, but we walked by anyway, and caught this rainbow in the big fountain.
After we checked in we had a little time to roam the museum on our own. I’ve been meaning to blog about how much I love the renovated dinosaur halls. The bases are cleverly designed to prohibit people touching the skeletons without putting railings or more than minimal glass in the way, and you can walk all the way around the mounted skeletons and look down on them from the mezzanine–none of that People’s Gloriously Efficient Cattle Chute of Compulsory Dinosaur Appreciation business. Signage is discreet and informative, and so are the handful of interactive gizmos. London and I spent a few minutes using a big touch-screen with a slider that controlled continental drift from the Triassic to the present–a nice example of using technology to add value to an exhibit without taking away from the real stuff that’s on display. There are even a few places to sit and just take it all in. That’s pretty much everything I want in a dinosaur hall.
Also, check out the jumbotron on the left in the above photo. It was running a (blessedly) narration-free video on how fossils are found, collected, prepared, mounted, and studied, on about a five-minute loop. Lots of pretty pictures. Including this next one.
There are a couple of levels of perspective distortion going on here, both in the original photo and in my photo of that photo projected on the jumbotron. Still, I feel confident positing that that is one goldurned big ilium. I’m not going to claim it’s the biggest bone I’ve ever seen–that rarely ends well–but sheesh, it’s gotta be pretty freakin’ big. And apparently a brachiosaurid, or close to it. Never mind, it’s almost certainly an upside-down Triceratops skull. Thanks to Adam Yates for the catch. I will now diminish, and go into the West.
Triceratops, Styracosaurus, and Einiosaurus–collect the whole set!
Of course, the centerpiece of the second dinosaur hall–and how great is it that there are two!?–is the T. rex trio: baby, juvenile (out of frame to the right), and subadult. Yes, subadult: the “big” one is not as big as the really big rexes, and from the second floor you can see unfused neural arches in some of the caudal vertebrae (many thanks to Ashley Fragomeni for pointing those out to me on a previous visit).
Awwwww! C’mere, little fella!
Still, this ain’t Vulgar Overstudied Theropod Picture of the Week. Here are some sweet pneumatic diplodocid caudals in the big wall o’ fossils (visible behind Mamenchisaurus in the overhead photo above). The greenish color is legit–in the Dino Lab on the second floor, they’re prepping a bunch of sauropod elements that look like they were carved out of jade.
Sudden violent topic shift, the reason for which will be become clear shortly: London and I have been sculpting weapons of mass predation in our spare time. In some of the photos you may be able to see his necklace, which has a shark tooth he sculpted himself. Here are a couple of allosaur claws I made–more on those another time.
The point is, enthusiasm for DIY fossils is running very high at Casa Wedel, so London’s favorite activity of the evening was molding and casting. Everyone got to make a press mold using a small theropod tooth, a trilobite, or a Velociraptor claw. Most of the kids I overheard opted for the tooth, but London went straight for the claw.
Ready for plaster! Everyone got to pick up their cast at breakfast this morning, with instructions to let them cure until this evening. All went well, so I’ll spare you a photo of this same shape in reverse.
We were split into three tribes of maybe 30-40 people each, and each tribe bedded down in a different hall. The T. rex and Raptor tribes got the North American wildlife halls, but our Triceratops tribe got the African wildlife hall, which as a place to sleep is about 900 times cooler. Someone had already claimed the lions when we got there, so London picked hyenas as our totem animals.
Lights out was at 10:30 PM, and the lights came back on at 7:00 this morning. Breakfast was out from 7:15 to 8:00, and then we had the museum to ourselves until the public came in at 9:30. So I got a lot of uncluttered photos of stuff I don’t usually get to photograph, like this ammonite. Everyone should have one of these.
London’s favorite dino in the museum is Carnotaurus. It’s sufficiently weird that I can respect that choice.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the old standards, especially when they’re presented as cleanly and innovatively as they are here.
Finally, the LACM has a no tripod policy, and if they see you trying to carry one in they will make you take it back to your car. At least during normal business hours. But no one searched my backpack when we went in last night, and I put that sucker to some good use. Including getting my first non-bigfoot picture of the cast Argentinosaurus dorsal. It was a little deja-vu-ey after just spending so much time with the giant Oklahoma Apatosaurus–elements of the two animals really are very comparable in size.
If you’re in the LA area and interested in spending a night at the museum–or at the tar pits!–check out the “Overnight Adventures” page on the museum’s website. Cost is $50 per person for members or $55 for non-members, and worth every penny IMHO. It’s one of those things I wish we’d done years ago.
Horrible tyrannosaurs of the Boston Museum of Science
July 11, 2012
My awesome employers Index Data flew us all out to Boston a few weeks ago, for six days of food, drink, work (yes, work!) and goofy tyrannosaurs.
There is really no excuse for this, is there?
SPECIAL BONUS: I am wearing my Xenoposeidon T-shirt.
MOLD-A-RAMA
May 3, 2012
I’m in Chicago, visiting the Field Museum, which means two things: Brachiosaurus (see below), and Mold-A-Rama. Downstairs from the great hall, on the ground floor, they have Mold-A-Rama machines, and I cannot resist their siren song.
The Mold-A-Rama is the king of novelty souvenirs. You can keep your stamped pennies, little pewter spoons, hand-painted bells, and refrigerator magnets. None of them is worthy to sully the presence of the awesome Mold-A-Rama. You put in two dollars, and then you get to watch as this hissing, clanking 1950s machine with tubes and wires and lights actually makes your item right in front of your eyes. A few minutes later, BAM, you’re holding a hot, smelly hunk of probably carcinogenic plastic that is so fresh from the mold that it is still a bit soft. You can’t buy that kind of authenticity–except from a Mold-A-Rama.
See that red thing, newly made, still in the bowels of the machine? That is MY T. rex!
This is my first Mold-A-Rama Triceratops. I already have a T. rex from my last visit, way back in 2005, which I can now pass on to my son. I also have a Stegosaurus, a Brontosaurus (shown but not commented on here), and a Trachodon. Yeah, yeah, I know the real animals are known as Apatosaurus and Edmontosaurus these days, but I’m not talking about the real animals. I’m talking about Mold-A-Rama, and trust me, the Mold-A-Rama critters are Brontosaurus and Trachodon. They drag their tails, they live in swamps, they’re cold-blooded and they died out from racial senescence (in about 1975, I think).
Finally, because Mike will straight-up murder me if I post from Chicago without it, here’s your friendly local not-quite-fully-mature mounted holotype specimen of Brachiosaurus:
Roadside reptile rampage!
October 5, 2010
What makes America great? The Constitution, the Grand Canyon, and the Statue of Liberty would probably make most peoples’ short lists. I’d also nominate chili cheeseburgers, the fact that we occasionally elect lunatics to high office just to keep the rest of the world from relaxing too much, and, of course, roadside dinosaurs.
Now, I know that there are dinosaur parks in other countries. Hell, dinosaur parks were invented in other countries. But I ask you: can you name another nation on earth wherein a bloody civil war that sunk the entire country into decades of social and political unrest is celebrated by imagining that it had been fought against freakin’ dinosaurs? (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, click here for more awesome that you are probably prepared for.) I submit that you cannot. No dinosaurs manning the guillotines in Paris, or the machine guns in St. Petersburg. I thought that W.J.T. Mitchell’s The Last Dinosaur Book was pretty darned loopy, but the chapter on how Americans celebrate being American by putting up gigantic dinosaurs all over the place struck a sympathetic chord in my heart. Because whatever you may want to believe to the contrary, we do put up gigantic dinosaurs all over the place. And if you’ve spent much time on the fabled open roads of this great land–which occupy even greater mythological space than our beloved saurians–you’ve seen ’em.
Case in point: the dinosaurs of Yucca Valley, California. These were a surprise to me when I discovered them this past weekend. I was on the road to Joshua Tree for a star party, and you can head on over to 10 Minute Astronomy for that end of this two-part inter-blog cross-country tale of national champion harmonica players, florescent arthropods, and welded scrap metal. Here in Part Dos I am only dealing with the saurischians.
And, oddly enough, they were all saurischians: a T. rex, two spinosaurs, and a mother and baby sauropod. All arrayed around the fence enclosing some kind of real estate office, right along California Highway 62 at the east end of the town of Yucca Valley. No signs with the dinosaurs, and no explanation of the connection, if any, between them and the business. Although the attraction is not that hard to fathom.
Also, I was happy to see that whereas the three stinkin’ theropods are unfenced and unchained, the sauropods are protected behind a spiky fence, and held down with both ropes and chains. Which, I admit, seems a bit excessive. But it also apparently means that potential giant-welded-dino thieves in the greater Yucca Valley area prefer sauropods, which I take as a sign of natural discernment and good taste in the population at large.
What does all of this mean? In part, it means I should probably revisit my policy on not blogging after midnight. But also, a local guy armed only with welding equipment and a pile of scrap metal decided that the best way to promote his business was by putting up some roadside dinosaurs. He could have built a State of Liberty or a St. Louis Arch or a moon rocket. But nobody would have stopped for those. People stop for roadside dinosaurs.
One more, for the road, as it were: an homage to Jerry Harris.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 