Dinosaur Exhibit Reveals New Insights Into Life And Death Of Ancient Reptiles (ORIGINAL VIDEO)

Cara Santa Maria: I'm here at the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County, and I'm about to speak with Dr. Luis Chiappe, the curator of their recently built dino hall.

This is a new dinosaur exhibit here at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History. What makes this one so different than other exhibits? Because you know, I go to a lot of dinosaur exhibits.

Luis Chiappe: Right. It focuses on the nature of science, on the how do we know what we know?

CSM: I love that!

LC: This is not a chronological exhibit. This is not--

CSM: So we're not walking through time here?

LC: No, we're not putting the animals in dioramas or anything like that. It's really using dinosaurs as a vehicle for understanding the nature of science, and that's what we've done here. But this is a really cool specimen. I wanted to show it to you.

CSM: What is it?

LC: Well, it's a plesiosaur. It's a kind of marine reptile. What's very interesting of this animal is that it's a pregnant mother that died with it's baby inside her belly.

CSM: So it's not inside of an egg?

LC: It's not an egg. No actually, this is the only evidence we have that plesiosaurs, these animals, gave birth to live young.

CSM: I mean, this is a really impressive specimen. How rare is something like this?

LC: It's one-of-a-kind. I mean, there's no other specimen like this. It's the only one in the world.

CSM: What am I seeing here?

LC: You're seeing the baby right there. If you look at--

CSM: Here?

LC: Yeah.

CSM: All the tiny bones--

LC: Yeah, all those tiny little bones between the flippers. That's part of the baby. And we know that it was inside the body of the mother. It was born with a huge size, about 40% of the size of the mother.

CSM: Wow. We wouldn't want to see that in humans, would we? (laughs)

LC: I guess not. (laughs)

CSM: So we know that this is a marine reptile, which is separate from dinosaurs. How do we define what is a dinosaur?

LC: Well it's defined on the structure of the hind limbs and the hip. The hip socket was hollow. The hind limbs were placed beneath the body in a vertical position. So that's really some of the defining features.

CSM: Sure. I know that there's some exhibits here that really discuss the similarities between dinosaurs and birds.

LC: Yes we do.

CSM: Would you like to show me those?

LC: Absolutely. And you know, when you look at them what you really need to think about is that birds also have dinosaur hips. Let me show you.

CSM: Great. So I remember learning in school that there was a mass extinction event: a giant asteroid hit earth and wiped out all the dinosaurs at once.

LC: Yeah, and there was one. But the point that we want to make here in this exhibit is that dinosaurs lived and died at different times.

CSM: So they didn't all die together, because they weren't all alive together.

LC: Exactly. You take two examples, Triceratops and Stegosaurus, two iconic dinosaurs. They lived 85 million years apart. They never got to meet each other.

CSM: Really?

LC: And we live 65 million years from Triceratops. So in time terms, we're closer to Triceratops than Triceratops was to Stegosaurus.

CSM: Right...that's why we're standing here in this section of the hall with pictures of birds everywhere, no?

LC: Exactly. And some dinosaurs.

CSM: And some dinosaurs. This is a dinosaur.

LC: This is a dinosaur. It's called Struthiomimus.

CSM: But those are birds.

LC: An ostrich and a swan. And when the extinction took place 65 million years ago, Struthiomimus didn't make it, and these guys--or the predecessors of these guys--did make it.

CSM: I see. And so their predecessors were birds or dinosaurs?

LC: They were birds, but birds had evolved long before from the dinosaurs.

CSM: Do we know how long ago that divergence took place?

LC: More than 150 million years ago.

CSM: And is that when my, my tattoo here of Archaeopteryx, is that when he lived?

LC: Archaeopteryx lived 150 million years--and is the earliest and the most primitive and oldest known bird.

CSM: But really a lot of these creatures were very, very bird-like.

LC: People should be thinking of birds as living dinosaurs, you know. You want to see a dinosaur, certainly you can come here to see great dinosaurs in this exhibit--

CSM: And I think a lot of people don't realize that they can go "dinosaur watching" just outside. Thanks so much for showing me around your beautiful exhibit, Dr. Chiappe.

LC: My pleasure.

To learn more about Dr. Chiappe and the new dinosaur hall at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, visit www.nhm.org.

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Comments

[Andre Fabre]

08:17 PM on 02/20/2012

What would you like for lunch, Sir?

A dinosaur Oreganato, please.

[wolfpeace]

09:20 PM on 02/22/2012

Only if the dinosaur is purple.

[13champlain]

03:04 PM on 02/20/2012

Nice of the guy to dress up for the camera

[Ghostdog9579]

10:42 AM on 02/20/2012

I know exactly what happened to the dinosaurs. Ancients aliens from another galaxy discovered them on Earth and hunted them into extinction and haven't been back since. Maybe I could sell that as a movie?

[bbriani3842]

11:18 AM on 02/20/2012

Only if you included cloning ...

[snowballinhell]

02:15 AM on 02/20/2012

Thank you, Cara, for writing this article. It's dear and near to my interests. One thing I think we can take away from this is we now know the answer to one of human kind's often asked questions: What came first, the chicken on the egg. Now we know.

And on a note to end this I am putting a list of my reading; books I really enjoyed from the time I was a kid to today and all on the subject of dinosaurs and evolution. If you have good books to recommend, please do as I would love to see how the issues facing paleontology turn out.

Here's my list:

Archosauria: A New Look at the Old Dinosaur by John C. McClughlin ,
Dinosaur Heresies, by Robert Bakker,
The Mistaken Extinction : Dinosaur Evolution and the Origin of Birds written by Lowell Dingus and Timothy Rowe
All About Dinosaurs by Roy Chapman Andrews
Bones for Barnum Bronw, by Roland T. Bird
Life of the Past by George Gaylord Simpson
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World by Gregory S. Paul
The Human Nature of Birds by Theodore Xenophon Barber
The Birds of Heaven-Travels with Cranes by Peter Matthiessen

Thank you, Cara Santa Maria and Dr. Chiappe

[snowballinhell]

03:06 AM on 02/19/2012

I take back what I said earlier. Dr. Chiappe is making the right point about the bird dinosaur connection.

[JC Knight]

02:42 AM on 02/19/2012

Great. Now every sparrow is going to look a velociraptor.

[cagog]

12:22 PM on 02/19/2012

That's why we need Dr Alan grant or Dr Ian Malcolm to save us.

[snowballinhell]

01:48 AM on 02/20/2012

Remember Alfred Hitchcocks' The Birds?

[cagog]

02:18 AM on 02/20/2012

Dont step one of them before you'll get your eyes plucked out like in the flick, just walk very slowly.

[Giantevilhead]

06:17 AM on 02/18/2012

Extinction is not as final as we make it out to be. Even when a species goes extinct, there are surviving species that share a lot of the same DNA. For example, if Chimps go extinct, 98% of their DNA will still be around, inside us.

So while dinosaurs may be extinct, who knows how much of their DNA has survived in creatures that still exist today.

[Christina-Xena]

04:34 PM on 02/18/2012

True, but a lot of that DNA is dormant (inactive for now) or sterile DNA (never will be expressed again).

Sometime in the not too distant future, scientist will "purify" man's DNA and remove all the old old junk DNA and weak disease creating genes, and as a result we will become a healthier and longer living species (if our earth damaging /war mongering ways don't kill us off first). And after that we will enter the DNA enhancement stage where we activity continue man's evolution through science, since we have more the most part destroyed it by natural selection.

And somewhere along the DNA learning and manipulation process we will learn the DNA sequences of our planet's extinct creatures (already underway), and be able to reconstruct them, implant them into another species to jumpstart their existance again, then once they get to sufficient numbers we will have self-substaining populations for zoos and reserves. The Jurassic Park movie wasn't just fantasy..... just futuristic.

Seeing a skeleton of dinosaurs is interesting and informative, but seeing live ones up close will be truly exciting. Oh, so a few humans gets eaten along the way ...that's just the price for success in DNA advancements!

[snowballinhell]

01:11 AM on 02/19/2012

And damned the unintended consequences, just as we do now. Oil in the Gulf - in all the world's oceans, polluted air and water, what the heck, so long as a few of us reap the profits - for as long as we live.

[Maezeppa]

02:28 PM on 02/20/2012

Some of the 'old junk DNA' that is unexpressed is found to still serve a purpose.  New research out of UCSD suggests that the noncoding regions of the genome play a role in maintaining an organism's genetic integrity. The noncoding regions, it seems, are strongly affected by evolutionary pressures, and in surprising, unexpected ways.

[snowballinhell]

01:36 PM on 02/19/2012

A doctor said that he was collecting dinosaur bones because he thought it amazing that 78% of T. rex bone's are shared with humans.

[hiwayman]

03:57 AM on 02/18/2012

watch a robin eat

[AB Taylor]

02:38 AM on 02/18/2012

Are those fake glaesses that Cara is wearing? Those big white hings on here face don't seem to have lenses.

[Calypsis4]

09:32 PM on 02/17/2012

Birds are related to dinosaurs? On what planet? That's like saying rats are related to bats...never mind the fact that there is absolutely no connection in the fossil record. Nor do they find any other organism they can justifiably link bats to. The oldest bat (Onychonycteris finneyi) is 52.5 mya and yet it is fully developed as a bat and has no predcessor...and...has not evolved into any other organism since.

The Darwinian community continues to make monumental mistakes in such matters. Recently the NY Times reported that 'archeopteryx' (so-called transition between birds and reptiles) was not what it was cracked up to be: Read for yourselves: Birdlike Dinosaur Fossil May Shake Up the Avian Family Tree-- http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/science/02fossil.html?_r=1

I no longer believe what they say about fossilization nor in their predictions.

[ranwolf1976]

10:53 PM on 02/17/2012

forgive me if I take the word of several thousand paleotologist over the word of an anonymous commenter on the net.

[Calypsis4]

11:17 PM on 02/17/2012

And every single one of them that interprets the evidence in Darwinian terms do so because they were brainwashed to think that way in the first place...just like you. I am an ex-evolutionist science teacher. I am by no means alone.

P.S. you did NOT answer my documentation. You avoided it.

[Calypsis4]

11:26 AM on 02/18/2012

That is total baloney because there is no genetic connection between the two species. I don't care what those 'paleotologist's' (sic) have to say because none of them can make such a connection. I just gave you documented evidence that birds and dino's are not related but you shoved it aside and ignored it. How typical of neo-Darwinians who are well known for dissing evidence that goes against their beliefs.

The fact is that no genetic connection between chickens and dinosaurs has ever been made. Quote: "The successful extraction of ancient DNA from dinosaur fossils has been reported on two separate occasions, but, upon further inspection and peer review, neither of these reports could be confirmed." (Wikipedia). But I am sure you will ignore this fact also since it flies in the face of your fairy tale belief in evolution.

[AB Taylor]

02:48 AM on 02/18/2012

Birds are related to dinosaurs on this planet. The NYT article staes only that the recent fossile finds may displace archeopteryx as the earliest birdlike dinosaur. Rats re indeed related to bats as they are both mammels. In the fossile record, the connection is with the skeletal structure. I'm with ranwolf1976 on this one.

[Calypsis4]

12:44 PM on 02/18/2012

"I'm with ranwolf1976 on this one'. And you are both wrong. What was reported flies in the face of what they have been telling us for decades. But that doesn't bother you, does it? Evolution is given an elastic nature that stretches to include everything, no matter how contradictory the proponents of the theory are. There is no genetic connection between birds (chromosomes approx 80 among varieties) and dinosaurs (chromosomes as yet unknown!) and yet neo-Darwinists have the audacity to make any connection at all despite the fact that the most important evidence is a mystery.

Your reasoning is so flabbergasting. " the connection is with the skeletal structure." Really? Likewise humans have a skull with two eyes, nose, mandible, and teeth. So do thylacines. So we must be related, right? (wink). What you believe in is a lie.

[mmmmikkimac]

07:48 PM on 02/17/2012

Interesting - and if anyone goes to England, check out the Museum's there - several nice exhibits found at Lyme Regis in the early 1800s are there. Ms S.Maria could have left the lip ring at home and the tat could have been edited out - both were TMI.

[MikeDu]

06:42 PM on 02/17/2012

One interesting theory is a lot of dinosaur types you know were *reverse-engineered* birds! The good-old Velociraptor/Deinonychus of movie fame was most probably a little archyopterix type proto-bird that reverted back to ground hunting again early on. But with the benefit of particularly long strong arms, feathers, and probably a partial beak. That big hooked toe claw was probably originally useful for tree-climbing.

[glen11555]

04:48 PM on 02/17/2012

SleaStacks were the first to find Fried Chicken bones from PopEye's

[kmcc895370]

04:15 PM on 02/17/2012

What a cool chick! Dino tattoo and all!

[edwardandersons]

03:25 PM on 02/17/2012

Why have ancient civilizations who worked with the land much more then we do not have wondered about all these ancient bones they found? Mabye they knew what they were since they existed along side them and this is why they did not care to study them. Why did it take like few centuries for us to question these bones? Did you ever wonder about that? I am sure the ancients found alot more of these then we did and yet took no interest in them. Very strange.

[annedyth]

03:36 PM on 02/17/2012

edwardandersons,
People who worked the land did wonder. Where do you think tales of giants, monsters and such came from. As for taking a few centuries to wonder. People in other eras, were interested in different things. Including survival in war times and famine....Dont think it's strange at all myself

[JamesScott]

03:58 PM on 02/17/2012

Finding bones and fossils is where they got their myths about hydras and dragons and unicorns and cyclopses et al., but no, they didn't find anywhere near as many remains as we do because there was no systematized excavation to do so.

[Christina-Xena]

04:49 PM on 02/18/2012

As for "systematized excavations," I think the first wave of widespread discoveries by purposeful diggings for fossils was well preceded by digging into the ground for other purposes, such as mining, basements of homes and building, farming, railroads etc. Then scientist come along and take over the finds.

So mankind's industrial revolution, increased standard of living, and interest by the wealthy (for art and artifacts) initially made such widespread Paleontology diggings possible. Then government and museums jumped onto the bandwagon to preserve and show such finds as national treasures.