Jurassic Rock

From the Desk of Ned P. Rauch:

Except for the obvious—Dinosaur Jr. and Keith Richards—I can’t come up with a pertinent connection between the subject of this site (music) and the topic about which I’m about to write (dinosaur bones). So what. I just enjoyed one of the most interesting days in my entire life. I’m not old yet, but I’ve been around for about 12,100 days, and that’s a lot, so you have to figure this most interesting day—an evening, really—is worth a Ten Dollar post. I got to go behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum’s dinosaur department. (They don’t call it that, but I do.) Here’s just some of what I saw and learned:

There was no grass during the time of the dinosaurs. No grass! Shrubs, bushes and ferns, sure, but no grass. A lot of the herbivore dinosaurs, weighing in at dozens tons or so, subsisted on nothing more than pine needles. Pine needles!

You know Tyrannosaurus Rex’s notoriously anemic arms, or forelegs? Well, scientists estimate that the bicep on each one of those things could lift about 480 pounds. That’s not nothing. But think about this: an elephant can lift something like 1,500 pounds with its trunk. As the guy who was showing us around put it, an elephant could rip the arms off Big Rex.

The people we (I went with two friends) met at the museum were phenomenally generous, kind, smart, enthusiastic and funny. One was the aforementioned fellow; we’ll call him Carl. The other was a woman we’ll call Carla. They’re great people.

Back to Senor Tyrannosaur. Despite the fact that he’s the most famous dinosaur, only 20 have been found. Ever. Anywhere.

The dirt and rock in which bones and fossils are found is called “matrix.” Researchers spot a fossil and dig around it so they end up excavating a block of matrix containing the whole set of bones. They bring that whole block, protected in plaster, back to the lab, where they finally remove all the matrix. I got to touch matrix that’s 230 million years old.

Way down, deep inside the Natural History Museum, far, far away from the exhibit spaces, is a room with the best name of any room I’ve ever heard: The Big Bone Room. I went there. Sounds like the title to an AC/DC song.

In the Big Bone Room are really, really big bones. There’s a femur of a Sauropod (one of those enormous, long-necked fellows) that’s about 5 feet long; vertebrae of same, each one the size of a tractor wheel. We saw one of its hip bones, too. Huge, of course. In it was a hole through which, when it was alive, passed an artery and the sciatic nerve. I could just fit my fist through it. Know what else could fit through it? This giant animal’s brain. Though the Sauropod weighed 100 or so tons, its brain was smaller than a cat’s.

What we grew up calling Brontosaurus is really called Apatosaurus. Erase the former from your mind. Misnomer.

Only about 10 percent of dinosaurs were predators.

We saw bones/fossils from Oviraptors; Protoceratops, which is a bit like the Triceratops, sans horns; Ankilosaurus, which has a tough, spiked back and a mace-like tail it could swing like John Henry swung hammers; another Triceratops-like fellow who had just two horns; that giant Sauropod; and a few others.

Birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs. In fact, a hummingbird is more closely related to Tyrannosaurus Rex than Dr. Rex is related to that two-horned Triceratops mentioned earlier. Really.

Speaking of hummingbirds, they don’t sleep. They go into a nightly hibernation, lowering their body temperatures and metabolism rates. Our guides know everything. They’re awesome.

Remember the Velociraptors in “Jurassic Park”? They should have had feathers.

Carla just discovered a new species of lizard in Peru. It’s tens of millions of years old. She gets to name it. Someone has already named a mammal after her. There are only a few rules in the name game: You can’t name anything you find after yourself and any name you come up with can’t be a direct insult to anyone else. If I found a new a new lizard, say, I couldn’t name it Steelydannus Suckius. Sky’s the limit otherwise.

Neanderthals had bigger brains than our ancestors. And according to Carl, they were so strong that had one of them met a linebacker from a modern football team, he'd have been able to pick him up over his head and toss him like a bale of hay. But get this: unlike our ancestors, the neanderthals didn't leave behind any art. They died out and we survived.

So that's how this post gets back to the subject of this blog. Without art, you're not going to make it in this world. So listen to music. Go to bars and watch bands. Our survival depends on it.

One more connection: "Rusty Cage," by Soundgarden and covered by Johnny Cash, mentions "burning dinosaur bones."

(Depiction of Apatosaurus from Wikipedia.)