My visit to the Natural History Museum in London

Well a few weeks ago i visited the NHM to meet up with a curator there, her name is Lorna Steel and she is pretty much like an idol to me, the same as Mary Anning that i have talked about before. Anyway well a couple of months ago i suppose i emailed her asking her about her job and things i would need to accomplish to become like her, so she told me and after a few emails she invited me to meet up with her and i was ecstatic! so i got to London and went in the staff entrance ( all exciting ! ) and met with her.

 she showed me behind the scenes in the palaeontology department and i got to look at some of the type specimens and general fossils which was really interesting and i hope to meet up with her again next time i visit.
  But its not just behind the scenes that are interesting, the whole museum is full of wonders! from fossils to mammals and from the bizarre to the beautiful. If you ever get the chance to go to London i strongly recommend visiting there are things for all tastes your spoilt for choice and its a place that you could spend all day at because personally if i get the chance even i will!  
Thank you so much Lorna if you're reading this it was amazing and i hope i can be like you one day!

Natural History Museum Treasures

Right, the next few posts are going to be about the Museum Treasures at The Natural History Museum in London. They have some rare pieces of history that you can visit an explore on your next visit. 
starting off with some of my favorite pieces.
The Archaeopteryx  fossil:

" The fossil caused a lot of confusion when it was discovered in Germany in 1861. It had feathers like a bird, but teeth, claws and a bony tail like a dinosaur.
Richard Owen, the Museum’s first superintendent, knew there was something extraordinary about it. World-famous for his skill in identifying animals, he classified Archaeopteryx as a bird. No birds were known from so far back in time. 
But Owen failed to realise just how remarkable Archaeopteryx was."
- Natural History Museum website
 The Archaeopteryx was a small insectivorous creature that is like a cross between a dinosaur and a bird, to put it in my language its kind of a flying lizard i guess like a pterosaur. People were confused when it was first discovered because birds had not been known so far back but this fossil changed everything. Only 10 fossils are known to science, yet this is the ONLY one whose skull and brain imprint could be studied.

The Sauropods

The sauropods ( sauropoda ) are one of the most well known groups of dinosaur worldwide, but there are many more species than the common household names,  for example, the Brachiosaurus. Sauropods were dinosaurs that had long necks, long tails and a small head compared to the rest of the body and thick, pillar like legs. 
peace out...lozthedinogirl

Leaellynasaura

Leaellynasuara was a small herbivorous lizard that was found in australia, its tail was three times as long as its body. It was named after the dicoverers daughter.
Just a short summary today but i will be back tomorrow for the usual post.
peace out

The heroine of palaeontology

The heroine on palaeontology, Mary Anning is famous around the globe for discovering some of the most important examples of fossils, mainly marine reptiles, in the world.
Mary anning was born over 200 years ago and lived in lyme regis ( now what is called the jurassic coast ) with her older brother joseph and her parents. Her father was a cabinetmaker but also collected fossils from the sea cliffs to sell to tourists to boost the family income, so when he died the family was left extremely poor, Mary, her brother and her mother carried on collecting fossils to make a living.
When mary was 11 she made a vital discovery which is now in the Natural History Museum in london, she found the first complete skeleton of an ichthyosaurus, ( a marine reptile with a large head, sharp teeth and brilliant eyes ). A year before Joseph had noticed part of the fossil sticking out of the cliffs, but it was Mary herself that put the work in to get the fossil out. Later on in life she found two more complete ichthyosaur skeletons that took years to carefully excavate out of the cliffs. The work she did was very dangerous because of landslides and one unfortunate landslide killed her dog, Tray.
Mary's little fossil shop did not make much money but many people rallied to help the family. one man, Thomas Birch even sold his own fossils to help them out in hard times. She met geologists from all over the globe who were interested in her finds and the new science of palaeontolgy ( the study of fossils ),  she became friends with many famous scientists including Henry de la Beche (  a president of the Geological society of London ). At the time it was unusual for a women, particularly one who was so poor, to know so muh about fossils and geology or any science for that matter. Mary spent nearly all her time hunting for fossils, but it was 10 years before she made her next really important discovery. She found the first almost- complete skeleton of a plesiosaurus, another marine reptile ( which had a ling neck and small head ). No mistake she made many other extremely important discoveries as well like the first British Pterodactyl ( a flying reptile ), a fossil belemnite with a ink sack kind of the same as a squid  and another plesiosaur which won new respect for her and her family. Just before the heroine died she was given a special award; she was named the first honorary member of the new dorset county museum and a stain glass window was placed in the local church as a thank you for all her great work.

The real Velociraptors

Ok, now i know a lot of us have a sterotypical image in our minds when someone says Velociraptor for example, this...

But in reality they dont look like that, they aren't covered in leathery skin they actually look like...

well this... Dissapointing huh? they actually looked kind of like a giant chicken, ive just ruined all your memories and knowledge from jurassic park in one sentence.  velociraptor was a  mid-sized dromaeosaurid that was a hunter ( carnivorous ) just in case you didnt know

peace out, lozthedinogirl

Ornithocheirus

Right, this is ornithocheirus one of the largest known pterosaurs. When walking with dinosaurs made this the other larger pterosaurs were most likely not found yet but its still interesting if you'd like to learn about other pterosaurs. Thanks to BBCearth for this video. I will put some other videos on here about land dinosaurs to keep balance later on but for now, enjoy!

Rockwatch

http://www.rockwatch.org.uk/
Rockwatch is a club for young geologists interested in fossils and the earth. I have recently joined Rockwatch and they give you so much information when you join them, you get 2 magazines, a folder about the earth and fossils, a magnifier, badge, I.D card and many more items. If your a budding geologist or palaeontologist then i highly recommend joining this club. Its £10 per year for an individual and £15 for a family to join, you go on fieldtrips and meet geologists on the field. Its amazing i love this site its tells you so much so i definately recommend checking this out,
Peace out.

Dinosaur types

There are a few different types or classes of prehistoric creatures
Carnivores - dinosaurs that mainly ate meat; so other dinosaurs
Herbivores - dinosaurs that mainly ate plants like ferns or leaves
Omnivores - dinosaurs that ate a bit of both so meat and plants
Insectivores - dinosaurs that ate insects
piscivore - a dinosaur that counts as a carnivorous animal but ate mainly fish and aquatic animals

my passion

some people only concentrate on the usual prehistoric creatures, but there is one group of animals that amazes me more than others...Pterosaurs the monsters of the skies are the major creatures of my life, i abosloutlely adore them but there is one specific pterosaur that i love the most and that is the Quetzalcoatlus one of the biggest pterosaurs ever found...even though i may never be able to see a fossil of one for myself or study one i still think they are amazing. i mean the sheer size of one is jaw dropping. The Natural History Museum holds one of the largest fossil collections in the world and one special one that the heroine of palaeontology discovered Mary Anning the famous fossil hunter found the first Pterosaur to be discovered outside of germany and i admire her for showing people that girls can get down and dirty fossil hunting just as well as boys can,  she is a major part of my life i follow in her footsteps, i only have one fossil at the moment but if i ever had the chance to see other Pterosaur fossils i'd probably faint of happiness but if you enjoy dinosaurs and think thats something you could take up, go fossil hunting or try to get in touch with other palaeontologists or a geological society like i am. But i must say if i could spend even a day around fossils, study them, touch them its my dream thats why i enjoy going to the Natural History Museum because you can get so close to the fossils.

Wooly mammoth discovered in Russia

scientists and researchers have discovered a female wooly mammoth carcass in russia which they claim to have found well preserved muscle tissiue on parts of the mammoth. Unfortunately the blood subsance that they have taken from the muscle wont bring us any closer to cloning the mammoth, really blood is only a start. like other mammoths that have been found previously, the estimated 10,000 year old female  recently found among Russia's Novosibirsk Islands has kept intact all these years in the northern freeze. but its not just the mammoth discovery thats making headlines, its the peculiar liquid found around the carcass has also been making headlines.

Semyon Grigoriev of North-eastern federal university is the mammoth expert who lead the expedidtion to find the mammoth has said that he thinks the fluid around her carcass may be blood containing viable blood cells which is bringing us closer than we have ever been before to bringing back the mammoth, but we are still a long way off. no scientists can really tell what the red fluid is underneath the mammoth but if it is intact cells that can be salvaged for resarch then we would have overcome the first hurdle of cloning in the 21st century. Beth shapiro ( an ancient DNA expert at the university in california, santa cruz ) says that she is " super excited " about the discovery of the female mammoth but she also added "I don't think it's impossible that there is some blood in such a well-preserved find." but later on in the interview, despite the chances of there being intact cells she says "I strongly, strongly suspect that there will be zero intact cells in the find, regardless of whether blood is preserved." The focus on the cloning of the mammoth has distracted everyone and the press about all the useful information that the discovery is bringing science, we can start to piece together how they lived, and have accurate artists impressions to put in the history books.

        

Quetzalcoatlus

this is the skelton of the largest flying animal ever to live on earth, Quetzalcoatlus was a  pterodactyloid pterosaur estimated from the Late Cretaceous of North America and the biggest Quetzalcoatlus fossils came from an individual with an estimated wingspan as large as 15.9 meters (52.2 feet) but more recent fossils suggest to have a wingspan of about 10–11 meters (33–36 ft).  Mass estimates for the Quetzalcoatlus are very problematic because no existing species share a similar size or body plan, so far, to the quetzalcoatlus. While some studies have historically found extremely low weight for Quetzalcoatlus, as low as 70 kilograms roughly (150 lb) for a 10-meter individual specimen, more fossils that have been found and have been published since the 2000s have been higher, around 200–250 kilograms (440–550 lb). The Skull material that has been collected throughout past years (from the unnamed smaller species that have not been found much) shows that Quetzalcoatlus probably had a very sharp and pointed beak for its feeding habits, contrary to some earlier reconstructions that showed a les sharp snout (beak), based on the jaw material from another pterosaur species, possibly a tapejarid or a fossil related to Tupuxuara. A skull crest was present on the Quetzalcoatlus but its exact form and size are still unknown to science but it was most likely used for displays to the other gender during mating season or maybe other reasons, like the fact that Quetzalcoatlus was a glider and didn't use its wings often only for take off which was also difficult because of its weight so it wasnt very graceful on the ground since it was the same height as a giraffe and easily ate other smaller dinosaurs as its general diet and in the air was roughly the same size as a small plane.