the dinosaur project legend of dinosaurs & monster birds

The American Museum of Natural History, New York, sent an expedition to the Gobi Desert, China, in 1926, and discovered the first dinosaur eggs since that time, many dozens of fossil eggs have been found some containing the delicate bones of embryonic dinosaurs.

The great Brontosaurus displayed in many museums and books, was found to have received the wrong head during reconstruction and has now been corrected and renamed Apatosaurus.

The great merit of the comparative method is that it enables paleontologists to be reasonably certain which bone belongs to what animal although occasionally mistakes have been made. Most fossil discoveries are broken and flattened and very often consist of the bones of many animals mixed together. In the same way, the Stegosaurus was reconstructed although to this day no one knows if the plates on the back of the Stegosaurus were in one row or two nor is anyone certain of the purpose for these plates. For example, both the living hippopotamus and its skeleton is known and from this relationship the extinct hippopotamus (Hippopotmus gorgops) was reconstructed. Then, by similar relationships, extinct creatures can be reasonably reconstructed from their fossil (skeletal) remains. This method depends upon knowing the relationship between living creatures and their skeletons. What did dinosaurs look like? The great French “father of paleontology,” Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), established the method of comparative anatomy.

The dinosaur project legend of dinosaurs & monster birds