A guest blog entry by Bolortsetseg Minjin, postdoctoral researcher from Mongolia currently working at the Museum of the Rockies:


Bolor (pronounced Boldra) with Jack Horner at a Mongolian dig site.

I am a paleontologist at the museum doing research with Dr. Jack Horner. We are working on the paleobiology of the dinosaur Psittacosaurus, and I am working specifically on how the skull of this dinosaur changes as the animal matures. Psittacosaurus is a sheep-sized dinosaur that is a primitive member of the ceratopsian dinosaur group, which includes the horned dinosaurs like Triceratops.

I just got back from a trip to Mongolia, and I borrowed and brought back some bones of Psittacosaurus ...

Although collecting dinosaur DNA from insects fossilized in amber has not yet resulted in a real Jurassic Park, scientists are still thinking about whether it might ever be possible to produce a living dinosaur. In fact, most of us see living dinosaurs everyday—birds—the descendents of dinosaurs. In the new Discovery Channel special Dinosaurs: Return to Life? I suggest that scientists may someday be able to “retro-engineer” dinosaurian characteristics such as teeth, scaly skin and long tails in modern birds. In fact, research is already underway by other paleontologists working on gene modification in chicken embryos. They have successfully produced embryos with longer tails and the beginnings of teeth. As this kind of research continues, I predict that within the next 50 years or less we will be able to flip genetic switches and produce living birds with dinosaurian traits.

Science is making it possible that we could retro-engineer a dinosa ...

This past week we hosted paleontologist Thomas Carr from Carthage College in Wisconsin.  Thomas studies Tyrannosaurus rex. Because we have one of the best T.rex collections in the world, T.rex specialists often visit the Museum of the Rockies.  Thomas was here for several projects he is working on and also to visit with me concerning a project to determine if Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus rex could possibly be the same animal but represent different growth stages.  The biggest difference between these two tyrannosaurs besides size is that T.rex has 12 to 13 teeth in each of its lower jaws, whereas smaller Nanotyrannus has 17 in each jaw.  No other dinosaurs are known to l ...

This week I begin teaching two classes. One is called Origins and is taught by 3 Montana State professors.  Neil Cornish, an astrophysicist starts the class with the origin of the universe, string theory, and so on. Then, after spring break, I will lead the second part on the origin of life, and evolution.  Mike Miles, a theologian, will come in during the discussions of science with philosophical and religious perspectives.  This class is very popular, but is offered to only 15 to 17 of the top students at MSU.  The second class I'm teaching is called Comparative Osteology, and it is for graduate students in paleontology and biology.  This is an important class for paleontologists because it’s where we learn all about bone biology.  Over the course of the semester I will share (on the blog) summaries of each week’s Comparative Osteology classes, and probably pass along some tid-bits concerning the Origins class.

New Years is a funny time for a paleontologist since we generally think in terms of millions of years.  What's another year, other than a time to be thinking about what we collected last summer, or what we might find next summer?  This year (2007 for the next 10 hours) was my 25th year at the Museum of the Rockies, and it is kind of fun to think back on all the specimens that my field crews have collected over two and a half decades.  We have more than a dozen T.rex skeletons, two dozen Triceratops, and nearly fifty skeletons of dinosaurs like Maiasaura, Hypacrosaurus and Einiosaurus.  We have the world’s only Triceratops growth series, the best known specimens of T ...

Plant-eating dinosaur tooth

Continuing the discussion on teeth, one of the things I find interesting is that dinosaur teeth are very simple, unlike mammal teeth that are very complex.  I think most paleontologists would agree that the reason for this is that mammals generally only replace their teeth once during their lives whereas dinosaurs and other reptiles replace their teeth throughout their lives.  T.rex apparently replaced each of its teeth every year or so.  For this reason dinosaur teeth didn't have to be completely covered with enamel or have complex shapes.  They could be rather simple because they would be replaced before they were completely worn out.  So, almost all meat-eater teeth are identical to one another except for ha ...

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, and all examined your turkeyosauruses.  I have only one question about your eating of the turkeys.  Did your teeth bite through the tough outer layer on the leg bones?  Can you see your teeth marks on the turkey bones?  I suspect you didn't because your teeth aren't sharp enough.  The only way we have of knowing which kinds of dinosaurs that dinosaurs like T.rex ate is by finding T.rex bite marks on the bones of other dinosaurs.  We know that T.rex ate Triceratops, and T.rex ate Anatosaurus (“Edmontosaurus”), and we know that T.rex even at ...

Skeleton of T.rex

Thanksgiving is the very best time to remember that birds are dinosaurs.  That turkey you are eating was a living dinosaur.  I suggest that you keep all those bones after dinner, so that you will have the skeleton of a little dinosaur (only do this with a parent’s permission—an adult can help you boil them clean).  Then compare the turkey skeleton with the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus or a Velociraptor. 

Skeleton of Velociraptor

Examine things like the proportions of each leg bone.  The lengt ...

In the Early Cretaceous section of our new Dinosaurs under the Big Sky exhibit is a display that shows two Deinonychus climbing up the neck of a sauropod.  This scene is very controversial as it suggests that raptor-like dinosaurs including Velociraptor used their hand claws to climb their prey.  The so-called slashing claw might also have been used to dig into the prey animal's body as the raptor climbed up to feed on the live animal.  I think all the small predatory dinosaurs like Deinonychus, Velociraptor, Troodon and others attacked in groups and climbed their prey to begin feeding.

The reason for thinking that these dinosaurs could scale their prey has to do with the shape ...

Painting by Doug Henderson

I've been traveling a lot lately, and am posting this blog from New York City where I'm working with a couple of my co-authors on two new books—one about dinosaurs and one about learning differences.  But as I was sitting here looking out at all the big buildings, it got me to thinking about how large dinosaur herds or other social gatherings might have been.  Many years ago we discovered a huge bone bed of Maiasaura that suggested that more than 10,000 Maiasaura died in a catastrophic event such as a hurricane or volcanic eruption—but just how big might these groups have been?  If 10,000 died that most likely means that there were many more that lived, so the original herd probably exceeded at least 20,000.  Modern wildebeest herds consist of more t ...