Meet the Dinosaurs

Here we are in the Museum für Naturkunde’s Dinosaur Hall. Early in the 1900s, the Museum für Naturkunde (Museum of Natural Science) commissioned work in Tendaguru, Tanzania to excavate fossils.

Between 1909 and 1911, the German paleontologist Werner Janensch and his team uncovered 250 tons of dinosaur fossils. One vivid result of that work was this specimen of Giraffatitan brancai (formerly Brachiosaurus), the highest mounted dinosaur skeletons in the world.

For decades, paleontologists thought Giraffatitan brancai spent its time submerged in the water and used its nostrils like a snorkel, but current research supports that it was fully terrestrial.

The Tendaguru site revealed exposed shallow sheltered lagoons, so perhaps this giant enjoyed both.

Wow! This vast hall is entirely devoted to dinosaurs. And it’s not just a room full of bones. You can challenge a virtual Pachycephalosaurus or design neck frills for a hadrosaurus.

Many students visit the museum on school trips each year, and exhibits are designed to be not only informative but also fun.

In April, 1878, in Bernissart, Belgium, a team of coal miners unearthed a huge cache of dinosaur bones. A herd of about thirty iguanodons must have fallen into a ravine millions of years before.

Today, six of these skeletons tower behind glass cases that allow visitors perspectives from all directions.

Not only did the coal mine at Bernissart hold iguanodon bones, it also contained well-preserved fish, crocodiles, turtles, a solitary salamander, plant remains, and coprolite (pieces of fossilized dung).

The skeleton of dinosaurs and fossil remains are the protagonists of this area of the exhibition which shows the evolution of the Earth. More than 4,500 million years concentrated on a journey through fossils from all geological eras.

“Dippy”, the skeleton of the Diplodocus carnegii is one of the most outstanding pieces in the museum.

The skeleton of the Diplodocus carnegii, known as “Dippy”, come from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (Pittsburgh, USA). This replica was donated by Andrew Carnegie to King Alfonso XIII in 1913. 

In 1990, fossil hunter Sue Hendrickson made a major fossil discovery in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a discovery that now bears her name. As the largest and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimen on the planet, Sue was a unique and important find.

The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, bought the fossil skeleton for $8.4 million. Despite T. Rex’s reputation as a fierce killer, the skeleton is a favorite among the museum’s permanent exhibits.

Because this model of a 122­ foot long titanosaur was too big for its gallery at the American Museum of Natural History, its neck and head extend into the next room, welcoming visitors to the dinosaur halls. 

The Halls of Ornithischian and Saurischian Dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History feature about 100 specimens, 85% of which are real fossils.

This is a very small fraction of the museum’s dinosaur collection, which has grown enormously in size and importance since the museum’s first paleontological expedition in 1897. 

One of the 8-foot femurs, or thigh bones, is among five original fossils that are part of this display. Femurs are often the longest and strongest bones in an animal’s body. A human femur averages about 27% of a person’s total height.

The Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda of the American Museum of Natural History presents an imagined prehistoric drama: a Barosaurus rears up, protecting its young against an attacking Allosaurus. 

This Barosaurus is a cast from a real fossil skeleton, one of only two Barosaurus specimens in the world. It is also the tallest free­ standing mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. 

Barosaurus was an enormous long-necked, long-tailed herbivore whose fossils were first discovered by a postmistress in Pottsville, South Dakota. Allosaurus was a much smaller bipedal apex predator—it resided at the top of its food chain.

This display inspires visitors to wonder, “Which one would prevail?”
 

Are birds really dinosaurs? One section of the dinosaur exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History is titled “Birds: Living Dinosaurs” and explores the evidence to support the link between birds and dinosaurs, including the origin of feathers as extensions of scales.

Recent fossil evidence from China reveals that some dinosaur bodies were covered with filaments that were chemically and structurally similar to modern feathers. 

Like dinosaurs (and reptiles), birds have scales on their feet and legs; their necks are “s” shaped; they nest, lay eggs, and brood; and most significantly, their skeletons resemble those of reptiles in many ways.

One explanation for these shared characteristics is a common ancestor from which these groups descended.

The more sluggish metabolisms of so-called cold-blooded creatures means they grow more slowly than so-called warm-blooded creatures. Researchers have studied the rings on fossilized bones to learn how quickly dinosaurs grew.

Conclusions suggest that many dinosaurs were mesotherms, intermediaries between cold-blooded ectotherms and warm-blooded endotherms.

With a large bony frill and three horns on its stumpy body, this species resembles a modern rhinoceros. Its silhouette is unmistakable, but there is still an ongoing debate about the purpose of those horns: defense, courtship, or both?

The earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight, these winged reptiles are not quite dinosaurs because they are more closely related to birds than to any living reptiles. Pterosaurs’ “wings” were formed by membranes of skin and tissue, much like the wings of bats.

Their name means “double beam,” which refers to the double-beamed bones in their extremely long tails. For many years, diplodocus was the longest dinosaur known.

Between 17 and 22 separate plates lined the spine of these armored beasts. The plates were not attached to their skeletons but were part of their skin. The largest plates were two feet wide and two feet tall.

This is the most complete Stegosaurus fossil skeleton ever found, missing only its left foreleg, the base of its tail and a few other small bones.

Because all of the bones in this fossil belonged to a single animal, the specimen shows better than ever before what Stegosaurus would have looked like in life, around 150 million years ago.

Small blunt teeth and a wide, barrel-shaped body show that Stegosaurus fed on plants. It would have swallowed most of its food whole, relying on a massive gut filled with microbes to help digest plant matter. 

Stegosaurus would have used its fearsome spiked tail to defend itself against predators. Its back plates may have been used for display or temperature control.

Despite its size, some features of the hips suggest this individual was only a young adult when it died. Stegosaurus lived in a land of floodplains marked by wet and dry seasons.

Over time this land became the Morrison Formation, a rich source of dinosaur fossils in western North America.