My daughter is starting to be interested in dinosaurs and I surprised myself by how much I remembered from my childhood fascination. When you are a kid and you are interested in dinosaurs there are a handful that are the usual suspects that most kids know and Triceratops is certainly near the top of that list. I found this bit shocking: Can you imagine working on your ranch and stumbling across that find? How cool would that be?"This triceratops could easily be one of the most complete in the world," he said. "It only has to be 50 percent complete to be one of the top four most complete in the world."
I hand't realized that what we currently had was so incomplete. I wonder if this is this common for most dinosaur species?
I've read that in early excavations in China, archaeologists would pay per bone fragment. The locals they hired were very pragmatic people and so began unearthing dinosaur bones and then shattering them into as many pieces as possible. Prior to that, dinosaur bones were usually thought to be dragon bones and ground into powders for medicinal purposes. Sigh.
dinosaur bones were usually thought to be dragon bones and ground into powders for medicinal purposes.
-This makes a LOT of sense. I've never heard that, thanks.
It is quite common actually. Most biological records have a dearth of information that we extract huge amounts of data from by way of the educated guess. Remember 'Lucy'? We still don't even know for certain that she's even female. We just think she is. You should read this book.
Yeah.. I'll put it in line right behind The Fountainhead