The documentary “Raising the Dinosaur Giant” was directed by Charlotte Scott the dinosaur Giant goes over the story of how the 8 foot long femur was discovered by a sheep farmer. Then goes through the processes of how the paleontologists addressed this new find once it was confirmed that it was a dinosaur fossil. A man named Dr. Diego Pol played a large role in the film as he was the chief paleontologist in the investigation. He was interviewed multiple times during the duration of the film and gave his insight of the dinosaurs structure and How the dinosaur might have functioned. The film is narrated by David Attenborough following through different steps of how they built the complete dinosaur skeleton and other different components of the …show more content…
They used the calculated the possible weight of the dinosaur being roughly around 77 tons 101.6 million years old and used CGI to bring it to life giving another perspective of the creature. A third component is interviews. David Attenborough interviewed a man named Dr. Luis Chiappe he is a paleontologist in this situation there are many dinosaur nests which gave insight to Dr. Luis Chappie about how the dinosaurs may have had their offspring. He had many fossils of the eggs a few of them had partial skulls and bones inside of the fossilized egg one included mineralized baby dinosaur skin. Professor john hutson a man who has studied elephants for many years. Due to mr. Hudson's expertise in elephants he helped give insight on how the giant reptile may have walked and how its foot or feet may have moved and functioned. To help show how an elephant walks and where the pressure points are on the elephant, to help better a person's understanding, he laid down a meter long pressure-sensitive mat and had a large female elephant walk across the mat while the sensors …show more content…
The dinosaur weighed around 77 tons. This was found to be false upon further investigation and another recalculation of the numbers the dimensions of the colossal dinosaur were shown to be more likely at 69
Pachycephalosaurians, thick-skulled dinosaurs such as the Stegoceras and the Pachycephalosaurus. (1) Ceratopsians and Pachycephalosaurs are closely related in their characteristics. Ceratopsians processed a saddle-shaped boney frill that extended from the skull to the neck and typically had horns over the nose and eyes. The most popular was the triceratops, which could reach over 26 feet and weigh in excess of twelve metric tons. Their frills served two major functions.
Paleontologist L.B. Tarlo said that it was very difficult to ascertain the length of Liopleurodon. This was so because no complete skeleton was found. He then predicted from the skull, the skull was approximately one-seventh of the total length of the body. When we apply this ratio to the largest skull specimen of L. ferox, the total length of the body comes out to be a little more than 10 meters. The normal size from this calculation would be around 5-7 meters in length. The weight of it was estimated to be around between 75 to 150 tons. The more recent study and the finding of the complete skull of Liopleurodon. It showed the total size of the body was actually five times more the length of the skull. Thus, reducing the expected body size of it furthermore. The maximum size that a L. ferox could reach is just up to 6.4
The idea of cloning dinosaurs and other prehistoric life became popularized by the 1992 film Jurassic Park (based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel). Though it may have sparked new interest into the field of paleontology, it did so with deceiving inaccuracies. However, the technical fallacies of the actual dinosaurs are somewhat forgivable as it added to the film’s dramatic appeal. Velociraptor, as depicted in the film, was about the size of a grown man. In reality, velociraptor came to about the kneecap. Furthermore, velociraptor would more likely have been covered in feathers rather than the lizard-like skin portrayed in the movie. One scene shows velociraptor fogging the window of a door. This is an endothermic or warm blooded trait as it implies the dromaeosaurid’s body temperature is above the temperature of his environment. There is also no evidence of dilophosaurus bearing a neck frill, and brachiosaurus did not have the ability to chew his food in a circular motion (iguanodon was the first dinosaur to develop this technique by acquiring back molars to allow for equine or bovine-like chewing). Fortunately, tyrannosaurus remained very close to his biological authenticity, with the only paleobiological errors stemming from a lack in computer animation such as rudimentary ball and joint programs. However, the erroneous nature of the deoxyribonucle...
Now here is some background information on the dinosaur that is causing this stir because of its heart. The dinosaur is a Thescelosaurus, which means wonderful lizard. The average length of the Thescelosaurus is three to four meters, nine to twelve feet, long with an average weight of three-hundred kilograms, or about six hundred and sixty two pounds. They lived from the Campanian age to Maastrichtian age which are the later stages of the Cretaceous period. Another distinguishing physical feature of Willo is the bird-hips that the dinosaur has instead of the lizard hip. They have primarily been found in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. As far as their remains are concerned there is one complete skeleton, eight partial skeletons, elements, and teeth (Dinosauricon).
The article Tyrannosaurus Rex was a Slowpoke by John Roach relieves us of our fears when it states that, “the Cretaceous landscape was filled with large, lumbering creatures that any human with a fast car or bike or maybe even a quick sprint could outpace” (Roach). He tells us that T-Rex, “did not have the leg strength to run very fast, if at all, according to a computer model developed by two experts in the mechanical movements of living creatures,” and, “bring the discipline of biomechanics to the long and at times contentious debate over just how fast the largest of the largest creatures ever to roam Earth could run.”
“66 Million–Year–Old Dino With A Heart.” Media Kit 17 April 2000. North Carolina University. 2000 <http://www.dinoheart.org/mediakit/index.html>.
Of course it was the movie Jurassic Park who seemed to coin the phrase “Dino DNA.” This movie gave the public the thought that, a) it is possible to find dinosaur DNA and b) we can clone dinosaurs from this DNA. This essay is not going to pick apart Jurassic Park’s scientific value, however it will share the current knowledge and information on dinosaur DNA. The discovery of DNA is important because it may uncover different bits of information. The idea of cloning dinosaurs, especially at this point is out of the question. It is really hard to clone living animals today, with full DNA and genome strands, we can’t even think about recreating animals millions of years ago.
The jaw was really that of an orangutan. It had been filed down and parts that might have suggested it's simian origin were broken off. Both pieces had been treated to suggest great age. Piltdown was proclaimed genuine by several of the most brilliant British scientists of the day: Arthur Smith Woodward, Arthur Keith and Grafton Elliot Smith. How did these faked fragments of bone fool the best scientific minds of the time? Perhaps the desire to be part of a great discovery blinded those charged with authenticating it.
This idea was reinforced when a Diplodocus (a type of sauropod that lived in the late Jurassic) skull was found in 1884 that contained a large hole in the top of the head. Scientists believed that this hole contained the entire nostril (Witmer 2001; ). This positioning of the nostrils was used for many other models of dinosaurs as well, but when it was discovered that...
...ould estimate where they spent most of their time. By the length of the other skeletal bones, the size and shape of the animals could be determined, which also shared insight to its behavior. The largest primitive whales could indeed walk on land, but only did so for short periods because their legs could not take so much weight for long amounts of time. These behaviors allow scientists and paleontologists to understand even more as to how these fascinating and mysterious animals went from ruling on land to taking over the sea.
The dinosaurs were brought to life using ground breaking CGI by the “wizards” at Industrial Light & Magic and life-size animatronics by Stan Winston. Each frame the digital dinosaurs were in would take hours to render but the results speak for themselves. Stan’s team created animatronics for several of the film’s main dinosaurs. The T-Rex animatronic alone stood 20 feet tall and weighed 17,500 pounds (Jurassic Park (film), 1993). Animatronics were also created for the film’s triceratops, velociraptors and dilophosaurus. To give the dinosaurs their voice, samples from around the animal kingdom were combined to create unique blending of sounds for all the main dinosaurs. To make sure the audience would hear the dinosaurs as he intended, Steven Spielberg invested in the creation of a new company dedicated to digital surround formats called DTS. This brought digital sound into theatres in a way like never before. All of these innovations earned the film three Oscars for best sound, best sound effect editing and best visual effects.
Until recently, scientists believed the chances of finding a fossilized dinosaur heart were extremely slim. The heart belonged to a 66 million year old dinosaur found in Harding County in Northwestern South Dakota. The dinosaur, found in 1993, weighed over 650 pounds and was 13 feet long. The dinosaur was in fairly good condition with the exception of the left side of the skeleton. The small, plant-eating Thescelosaurus, nicknamed ‘Willo’ has been acquired by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Thescelosaurus was an ornithischian, or "bird-hipped," dinosaur that lived in the latter stage of the Cretaceous period. This was approximately 1 million years before the end of the dinosaur era. Native to North America, its range extended from the northern United States up into Canada. Since using the 3-D software to reveal Willo's heart, scientists have also used it to create 3-D images of the fossil's skull, and of remains from other dinosaurs in the museum's collection. (Fisher, Paul)
DNA has to be in a perfect sequence. Finding mammals, amphibians, and even reptilians to fit in the gap was a far stretch. Looking for relatives of dinosaurs was the better game. In the end, rainforest tree frogs, a few selected birds, and an unnamed reptilian was the closest to the dinosaur’s genetic code. However, the small amount of DNA obtained from the amber would not be enough to find the genetic code. To fix the problem, scientists multiplied the DNA through the use of the Polymerase chain reaction (a tool that produces thousands of genetic codes through the DNA put into the device). From there, the genetic code was known as A,T,C,G. Scientists then used computers to find the overlapping regions and set out the specific genetic code. The leading geneticist, Henry Wu, was the man attributed with the fame of completing the
An interesting rumor is that the Triceratops might have never existed. Studies show that as Triceratops’ get older their frills smoothen and their horns get sharper. As they age they start to look like a totally different dinosaur called the Torosaurus (figure 2). Paleontologist found plenty of older Torosaurus fossils but never any of younger Torosaurus’. Can the Triceratops be a younger Torosaurus? Nobody knows the answer to that infamous question.
Cartilaginous and bony fishes were abundant. Large fishes and marine reptiles were common; the largest bony fish ever to live existed at this time called the Leedsichthys, coming in at a mindboggling size. Estimates of the size of this fish range from 20 to 27 meters and mass from 20 to 50 tons (Owen). This species is the largest bony fish ever to have ever existed and swam in what is now near England. Jurassic pliosaurs are some of the largest carnivorous reptiles ever discovered, even rivaling Tyrannosaurus which lived during the Cretaceous Period, although the pliosaurs was not a dinosaur but distant cousins of modern turtles ranging from 4 to 15 meters. The ichthyosaurs were at their height, sharing the oceans with the plesiosaurs, huge marine reptiles covering the globe.