Yesterday I took John Wilkins to the Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight exhibit at the Arizona Natural History Museum. It was a wonderful opportunity to see 30+ fossils from China along with assorted models and recreations, particularly of Deinonychus (above, particularly cool), Therizinosaurus, Microraptor, Cryptovolans, Confuciusornis, Caudipteryx, and Shenzhouraptor. Some of the exhibit can be seen here [pdf] in a brochure by the Utah Dinosaur Museum. While John and I were a little puzzled at some of the statements on the accompanying descriptions, the exhibit overall comes highly recommended.
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Many of us believe dinosaurs to be extinct but in truth, they surround us every day. All the world's birds, from the pigeons of our cities to the gulls of our seasides, are descended from dinosaurs, and modern science now classifies the birds with their long-dead kin. The gulf between dinosaurs and…
Yesterday John Lynch (he of the Stranger Fruit) took me to see the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Mesa, which had some truly excellent displays of the feathered dinosaurs from China (they wouldn't let me photograph them, though, and none of the souvenir postcards had them either, but see…
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If you haven't seen it yet I recommend last weeks Nova episode on PBS, "The Four-Winged Dinosaur". You can watch it online at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/microraptor/program.html
If you could, tell John "hello" from me! Tell him also that if he wants to, he can look my brother (Eric) up in the Tuscon phonebook and say "G'day" for me, too!
Also, please send the good Dr. Wilkins back down under with a box or two of Wheat Thins and hopefully he can come visit me in Parramatta and share them. (Be sure he tries some anyway.)
(signed) marc