"Our full-sized major exhibit here is the fully articulated skeleton of Stegosaurus. Stegosaurus was one of the earlier dinosaurs in the Jurassic age, and it stood about 9 feet tall with the plates, and about 20 feet long. Stegosaurus was a more primitive dinosaur, it had a very tiny head - you may notice the walnut there on the skull representing the size of the brain of Stegosaurus. Stegosaurus had
this double row of plates up his back, which scientists now believe was used for heating and cooling, as opposed to protection...a large rib cage indicates a very large stomach cavity there for the grinding up of plant matter, because Stegosaurus was also a herbivore. The larger rear legs indicate that Stegosaurus could probably rear up on his hind legs, and his major protection was the spiked or clubbed tail that you see there."
"We do have, in the glass case here as well, a 100 million-year-old dinosaur egg of a dinosaur called a Hypselosaurus, which was a small-scale version of a Brontosaurus. It stood about 40 feet in length at full size. This egg was acquired from France and is one of the largest and best-preserved of dinosaur eggs. We wanted to give our visitors an idea of what the dinosaur might have looked like that was inside of it, so we had a sculpture commissioned there of a Hypselosaurus hatchling coming out of the egg, and you'll notice that it has a very E.T. look on its face. These dinosaurs were herbivores, as they said in Jurassic Park, 'Think of it as a large cow.'"
Baby Hypselosaurus Sculpture
| updated 8oct96 |